


Teamwork

by onthewaters



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: 2005, Alternate Reality, Crack, F/M, M/M, Team Misfit, rcmp, the one with the mathmatician, the one with the mountie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-25
Updated: 2013-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-12 22:35:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 24,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/816843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onthewaters/pseuds/onthewaters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is an Earth where things have turned out a little differently, and the people who go to Atlantis aren't quite the ones we know. </p><p>AKA The one where Rodney is a Mountie.</p><p>ETA: Deleted scene in comments!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. So it begins

For John Sheppard, it all started with some impossible math someone had posted on one of his favorite haunts, a forum on experimental physics. There was something bothering him about the equations – he checked the name: Dr. S. Carter, US Air Force. A wannabe scientist, then. He printed the calculations out and was about to laugh at them when something caught his eye. But no, it couldn’t be.

When he realized that Carter’s theories were not mathematically impossible – which had taken him four days to prove, working straight through the night and ordering eleven pizzas which were delivered by a guy who kept looking more and more freaked out with each visit – he thought he’d found the Holy Grail.

On finding out that a few of the calculations used laws which did not even exist yet, he set about proving the ideas behind them, coming up with a few new theorems along the way, which he named Cash, Bassey, Sinatra, and Davis, depending on what was on the stereo when he finished – it was only a matter of time ‘til he discovered Jagger, he thought, as he finally fell asleep on the last pizza box.

On waking, he decided to switch to Chinese, and dove right back in. If Bassey meant that Carter’s sixth equation was correct, his ninth had to be wrong.

Because there was no such thing as teleportation by wormhole, of course.

Having worked his way though General Pao’s chicken, sweet and sour pork, egg fried rice with prawns, three orders of spring rolls, and about six bags of krupuk – though he wasn’t sure about that, it might have been more – John wiped spilled soy sauce off the printer, figured he had earned a break, and came to the conclusion that he owed it to Carter to point out his mistake about the ninth equation.

So on his way to Coney Island, he dropped off a copy of his calculations at the post office, care of Dr. S. Carter, Air Force. They’d probably make sure he got it.

He rode all the rides twice, had two hot dogs and cotton candy, and kept the ferris wheel for last, and rode it until the park closed.

Coming home, he slept for sixteen hours straight, wishing there was a warm body beside him, where nobody had slept for ages, after Annie had gone. Gone with the wind, he thought sadly, Annie who never had understood how numbers could be so much more important than she – who never could understand that numbers were where you could touch perfection, could touch the truth. John imagined really understanding numbers would be like flying.

He went back to find Jagger, which turned out not to be Jagger after all, but Bon Jovi. John stared at the stereo with some appalled fascination and tried to figure out where that had come from, but failed. He spent a few moments wondering if he should edit reality just a little and work on it a bit more ‘til he got to Waits which was not ideal but had to be better than Bon Jovi when the door bell rang.

Ten minutes later, he was showered and dressed, half an hour later, he was at the airport, and three hours after that, he was in Colorado – seriously, what was in Colorado? – under a mountain, being talked at by Dr. S. Carter – who was actually female – who waved his calculations in his face and demanded to know where he got the idea that Davis was where it ended and how he had figured out Davis in the first place. John looked at the equations of three days ago and wondered how it could be Tuesday already.

John pointed at a bit of sweet and sour sauce and told her. She grabbed him by his jacket and dragged him off into some kind of strange room with a strange ring. Then she showed him what an event horizon really was, handed him his calculations for Davis and told him to do it over.

Two days later, John had Davis II, a headache, a security clearance, and a new job. A week after that, he had a trip to Antarctica to a strange chair which lit up all over the place when he sat in it, a long explanation by a not-so-crackpot Dr. Jackson, and a ticket to the Pegasus Galaxy.

It was then when it occurred to him that he hadn’t thought of Annie once.

 

+++

 

When Rodney McKay first heard about the Stargate from a tipsy Czech, he thought some people had flipped their collective lids. A gate to different planets, sure. What was next? Actual beaming people up? Tarot cards predicting earthquakes? Vampires?

He didn’t care that much, though – he was warm, he had eaten well, and the night might have been rather pleasant if the CSIS hadn’t interrupted them having the first sex in far too long.

Then he was dragged off to military arrest for six hours while some Inspector of the CSIS shouted at him for violating national security with a Czech. Said Czech, Rodney explained, was an old friend from a long-ago hockey friendly, and he didn’t see what sex had to do with national security.

The Inspector looked as if she was about to have a coronary, and screamed at him that it was not about the sex, and, indeed, not even about the hockey.

After that, they brought in an American General name of O’Neill, who sat down across from Rodney and talked about hockey for half an hour. Rodney drank coffee and listened. Then suddenly the conversation switched from hockey and Canada to Czechs and hockey, then to Czechs and sex – again – and the stockade. Or an alternative, which the General was happy to explain. The Pegasus Galaxy was mentioned, as was a grand adventure, the word liaison was dropped, and in the end, Rodney walked out free and with no more stockade threats, having agreed to the crazy scheme which he didn’t believe in at all.

His Czech, Radek, met him for coffee, rotating like crazy and forgetting how to speak English occasionally. Radek kept trying to tell him that it was all true, all real, and that they would go together, that Radek would figure out scientific artifacts and Rodney would shoot at aliens and they would have sex when they weren’t too busy with something else and it would be a great adventure!

Rodney nodded at the right places, hmm’d at others, and wondered when Radek had forgotten to take his medication and what that medication might be.

But he did pack, he did tell his sister to take care of the cat, and he did slam his brother-in-law against the wall and told him that if he made Jeannie unhappy, he was going to be dog food when Rodney got back.

The American base turned out to be inside a mountain; General O’Neill welcomed him and Colonel Sumner, the commanding officer of the military presence on – of all things – Atlantis, took one look at his uniform and growled something which might be translated to “Do what you want and stay out of my way.”

So when Dr. Weir called for them to go through, when his world view exploded in a wash of blue, Staff Sergeant Rodney McKay of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police screwed his courage to the sticking place and walked off the face of the Earth.


	2. Welcome Wagon

The Pegasus Galaxy turned out to be incredibly busy. Between keeping the city from going the way of the Titanic and trying to find a new ZPM, John met Dr. Weir, also a woman, and Colonel Sumner, not a woman but a military person. Neither of them seemed to understand that some things just had to be tried to work, so their default answer was “No.” And neither could come up with a reason for this beyond “Because!” It was depressingly like home. Except, of course, there were no ferris wheels.

When the city rose, John watched the show, smiling the smile that made people walk away from him very quickly. Then he spent hours happily within the database, the circuitry, and the personal space of a Czech scientist whose name started with Z. It felt rather nice to work with someone who could follow the more esoteric numbers John liked to juggle with.

When at some point he collapsed on something vaguely resembling a bed, some people had gone offworld, been captured by other people, been rescued by even different people, and taken some more people along to Atlantis. Group One had Sumner, Group Two was called Wraith, Group Three involved a dashing young Lieutenant, and Group Four were natives of another planet. John wondered how he was supposed to keep them all straight.

Or so he was told four hours later when someone named Carson Beckett, who turned out to be one of the the expedition’s geneticists, dragged him out of bed to play some more with Ancient artifacts in the medical area. John tried to explain his severe phobia against all things involving needles and drugs that contained neither alcohol nor THC, but was overruled by a Scottish accent.

Two hours later he found out that they had more trouble – the city didn’t always recognize people who didn’t have the Ancient gene. John had it, so did Carson, but Sumner didn’t, Weir and Z the Czech didn’t. So it tended to be John and Carson who were called in for most of the Ancient equipment.

Which was why he was rather desperately trying to contain the alien entity moving through Atlantis, cut off from anyone else. He'd run into it once already, and his hands were burnt where it had brushed him. He kept typing, blisters broken and bleeding on the keyboard which was really unpleasant because the plastic labels he'd taped over the Ancient markings were sticking to his fingers and that hurt. Also, of course, he couldn't stop. He was on his own.

At least he thought so until a broad hand covered his and drew it away from the sticky keys. John looked up in a wide face which had apparently had painful contact with something hard.

“Just tell me what to type,” said the face, and John found himself wondering if this man understood numbers.

 

+++

 

Rodney hadn’t been given enough to do, so he’d been exploring the city when the darkness showed up. Avoiding it had sent him crashing down a flight of stairs, but after he found the maths genius Radek had been going on about – “Hair sticks in every direction, but maths is great!” – typing wildly on a keyboard that was so smeared with blood that he could hardly make out the makeshift labels in English, he figured he could at least be useful here.

The maths geek with the hair took his hands away and looked at Rodney with hopeful eyes but didn’t talk. Rodney sighed.

“What do I type?”

That got the scientist out of his trance and he started dictating with a speed Rodney knew he could never have matched if not for the piano lessons he’d had as a child. His fingers hadn’t forgotten, and for about ten minutes, scientist and Mountie worked in synch, no jarring note in their coordination.

Then Radek decided to play hero with the shield device and banished the entity through the Stargate. Rodney felt vaguely relieved until the maths geek passed out on the floor and had to be taken to the infirmary to be treated for second-degree burns and dehydration.

The Chief Medical Officer, an unpleasant man named Martinez, apparently thought that a few burns and a passed out maths geek didn’t warrant his attention but a Scot named Beckett turned up at once and started muttering his way through the treatment. By the time Rodney had finished explaining how bits of plastic labels had gotten into the blisters on the geek’s fingers, Beckett was almost done and a Lieutenant was waiting in line to have a long gash on her upper arm stitched.

Just as Beckett was about to turn to her, some other scientist with a stupid ponytail turned up to complain about his one-inch scratch. He kept going on about the minor injury and Rodney debated if it was worth getting out his drill sergeant’s voice when the waiting Lieutenant got in first.

“Well, Dr. Kavanagh, while I can understand why a petty, small-minded jerk with a tiny dick might not get this –“

Rodney sat back down and enjoyed the show. When Kavanagh slunk away with a bandaid, he went over to the Lieutenant who was holding her hair out of the way as Beckett wrapped her arm.

“Hello. Rodney McKay.” He jerked his head in the direction Kavanagh had left. “Sounds like you met him before.”

She looked up, pretty but tough, and grinned at him. “You might say that.” He’d seen this kind of smile on polar bears. “Lieutenant Laura Cadman. Sorry about that.”

He shook his head. “Don’t be. It was a privilege to listen to.”

A genuine smile split her face and she extended the functioning arm. “Bastard had it coming.”

Rodney shook her hand carefully. All in all, this might not be too bad. Not like the two hundred conversations he'd had meeting new people, which invariably involved sentences like: Hey, you’re the Mountie! You gonna be licking things? Where's your wolf?

Suddenly, she started. “Hey, you’re the Mountie!"

Or maybe it would.

 

+++

 

John woke up starving and feeling better than he had in days. Carson shook his head at him and told him to get some sleep, damn it, and not work himself so far into the ground. John was released, and went to talk to Z the Czech, this time telling himself firmly that the man’s name was Zelenka, not Z. He hoped it would do some good.

Zelenka was in the lab, John’s typist from the other night next to him, and close enough that they could probably touch each other just by breathing in. Zelenka looked happy and excited but he always looked that way, and it suddenly occurred to John that he did not even know his typist’s name. And that it would almost certainly insult the man if he adressed him as Typist.

Zelenka spotted him and waved him over immediately.

“John, there you are, come here, great work on entity, but keyboard is now glued together –“

The typist rolled his eyes and grinned. “Radek, come off it. You’ve got more keyboards.”

“Yes, yes, of course, sorry, how are the fingers?”

“Fine,” John said. “Z - Zelenka, that was great with the shield, how did you -?”

Which was when Simpson got Radek’s attention and he vanished from between them. John didn’t quite know what to say.

“Hi. Good typing.”

The man’s face did something funny but it was gone too fast for John to get a handle on.

“Thanks. Good calculating, too.”

“Ah – yes. Thank you. John Sheppard.”

The typist nodded and shook his hand. “Rodney McKay. RCMP.”

John thought for a moment, then asked, “What’s RCMP?”

“Royal Canadian Mounted Police,” McKay said without inflection.

John waited, in case there was something more, then said, “Cool.”

McKay’s face went surprised for a moment, then he smiled and said, “I like to think so.”


	3. The I in Team

Colonel Sumner might be American – as in not Canadian – but he wasn’t a bad commander. As soon as it became clear that they would need ZPMs fast, he got teams assembled to go offworld and find some. And while he might not like the idea of a Mountie in Atlantis, he accepted it as reality and told Rodney to build his team. And if Rodney was the last to hear about it, it didn’t really surprise him.

Rodney sat down with Radek in the mess hall and tried to figure out who he was supposed to take and who was not already taken. The list wasn’t all that long.

Power bar in one hand and a pencil in the other, Radek made little crosses and stars next to some names. Rodney let him, enjoying his own power bar, until one name caught his eye.

“Sheppard? Nobody’s snapped him up yet?”

“Ah, no,” Radek said and the pencil stilled. “Not going to either.”

Rodney raised his brow at him. Radek waffled, not meeting his eyes.

“Is a bit difficult, Rodney. John is great in maths and physics, but following orders? Not so much.” Radek ate a piece of power bar.

“Oh,” Rodney said. “Sheppard won’t?”

Radek was drawing a hangman next to Kavanagh’s name. “I believe it might be childhood trauma. Or the hair. Maybe both.”

Rodney stared at the hangman which developed a ponytail, teeth, and glasses. “Seriously?”

Radek rolled his eyes exasperatedly. “Oh, Rodney, how should I know? All I know is that if you give him an order, you can forget about him doing anything. Sometimes he just sits back down, sometimes he yells at you, sometimes he gets look.”

“What look?”

“I don’t know, am I psychologist? Like he’s afraid of something. Cautious.” Radek drew an arrow from the hangman to Kavanagh’s name.

Rodney stared at the hangman for a moment, then looked up. “Is he good? Really good?”

Radek met his eyes full on for the first time since they’d started talking about Sheppard and put the pencil down. “If he wants to – you could not ask for better.”

Rodney took the pencil and without looking away from Radek, circled Sheppard’s name.

Twenty minutes later, he was in the genetics lab, leaning against a wall and watching Carson Beckett until the man got nervous and started dropping things.

“What is it?”

“Want to go offworld, Doctor?”

Beckett blinked at him with a little confusion. “Me?”

Rodney nodded.

“Is this a good idea? I mean –“ he gestured around a little helplessly.

Rodney walked up to him and pretended he didn’t see the widening of Beckett’s eyes. “Yes, I think it is, Dr. Beckett. You see, I’m not interested in someone like him.” He jerked his head in the direction of the CMO in the back office. Beckett looked a little shellshocked. “I want someone I can count on when people get hurt. When, Doctor, not if. We’re in another galaxy, and something is bound to go really, really wrong. And when it does, I want someone around who can do more than stitch people together. I want someone who will not back down before twits like Kavanagh, who will not decide his time might be better spent elsewhere. I want someone my team can count on.” He paused, watching Beckett’s changing expression. “And you can panic as much as you like after the mission’s over.”

“Where’s my Queen’s shilling?” Beckett said, resolve in his eyes, but immediately looked panicky again.

Colonel Sumner blinked at Rodney’s selection and looked at him as though he was a few sticks short of a hockey team. “Sheppard and Beckett? A man who cannot take orders and a panicking geneticist?”

“A maths genius and a medical doctor, sir,“ Rodney said.

Sumner had a look of “better you than me” about him. “Who’s your fourth? And it had better be someone from the military.”

“I’d like Lieutenant Cadman, sir.”

Sumner blinked again. Didn’t say anything for a moment, then shrugged. “Have her.”

 

+++

 

John’s first trip offworld was comprised of running to, away, from, and back. All in all, it was a lot of running. Beckett jumped at each strange noise, Cadman distracted Beckett by flirting with him, and McKay somehow kept them all alive.

They also found a blue plant which smelled like durian and tasted like chili. A collective vote decided against taking samples back to Atlantis. Nobody wanted the smell in their pack.

Back home, the smell of durian kept ambushing him at odd moments until John found Zelenka to give him a piece of his mind about the whole offworld concept. With each point John made, Zelenka’s face fell a little more and finally settling on a kicked puppy expression, he said, “I thought you were going to have fun.”

“Fun?” John asked. “I got shot at by the natives, almost eaten by the fauna, almost poisoned by the flora, almost deafened by McKay, and was hungry enough to eat Cadman!” Zelenka continued to look like his dog had died. John suddenly grinned. “I can’t wait to do it again.”

Zelenka started laughing, then choked until Simpson came running to see what all the fuss was about.


	4. How It Used to Be

When Rodney McKay was twelve years old, he asked his piano teacher if he could become good, really good. The man looked at him in a condescending way and said something stupid about Rodney being a fine clinical player, but having no sense of the art whatsoever. Rodney blew off the rest of the lesson and wandered down to the lake where he cried his heart out.

The next day he told his parents he wasn’t playing anymore and decided to win the science fair at school. That would show them.

The atom bomb he build was not a working model, and it didn’t win the science fair. Worse; the CIA came to school and took him away to an windowless room where they sat him down, and wouldn’t let him get up even to go to the bathroom. Rodney was starting to worry but said nothing even when they turned off the lights and started asking questions in the dark.

They got louder and more insistent, and Rodney became very aware of the fact that he was twelve years old, and that his parents were in London and could not be reached for some time.

One of the agents was just shouting in his ear, and he’d just about made up his mind to apologize, when the door opened again and someone in a brown uniform walked in and, with a few well chosen words, made the agents slink away.

Rodney had never seen anything this cool in his life.

His savior turned out to be Corporal Hartigan from the RCMP, with a true gift for oratory and a crooked grin. Hartigan took Rodney upstairs to a sunny office with pictures of snow on the walls, got someone to rip his parents a new one over the phone, gave Rodney a cup of tea and asked why Rodney had thought an atom bomb was a good idea.

Rodney blinked at him somewhat confusedly. People never asked him why – they asked what and where and when, but why? Never. So he attributed it to shock about being asked why that he spilled the whole story about the piano.

Hartigan listened and asked Rodney if this piano thing had hurt. Rodney by then felt a little ambushed by kindness and accidentally told the truth.

Hartigan nodded and they made small talk for a while. Hartigan asked Rodney to explain the design to him and suggested building things in the future that did not make people quite this nervous. He also handed him a thin leaflet on radiation poisoning and another on nuclear war. Then he sat quietly for a moment, seemed to come to a decision and got Rodney out of the building.

“I think you’ll make a fine scientist. But make up your mind if you want a Nobel or your name cursed in every history book for inventing something even worse than an atom bomb. Which you just might if you go on this way.”

Rodney was driven home, had to listen for half an hour to his father yelling over the phone, and stared at his hands for ten minutes after that. Then he went over to the library and borrowed a few books on ethics in science.

Having gone through those and not been satisfied with the conclusions, Rodney tried religion. That was even worse, took longer, and left Rodney with the vague feeling that if mankind followed everything religion told it to, the wheel wouldn’t be invented yet.

Philosophy was also a bust. It was complicated and kept contradicting itself.

By the time he went to college and graduated, he still hadn’t figured it all out. He’d majored in psychology and sociology anyway, with minors in physics, chemistry, biology, and maths, which was really interesting but not what he was looking for either. So when he had his Ph.D. at twenty-six, he said to hell with it and knocked on Hartigan’s door, as he had done occasionally for the last twelve years.

But Hartigan did not open this time; a younger Mountie did, obviously feeling awkward having to tell Rodney that Hartigan had been killed out in the Yukon – but that Hartigan had gotten his man.

Rodney went home and stared at his hands for an hour. Then he got up again, and applied to become a Mountie. With that, he would not be able to go wrong, he figured.

 

+++

 

When John Sheppard was thirteen years old, he wanted to become a pilot. He made the mistake of telling his father who had been in the Air Force until he was invalided out for reasons he never talked about. Paul Sheppard took his son out back, gave him a hiding he would never forget, and grounded him for the entire summer vacation.

John came to the conclusion that telling adults such things was dangerous and didn’t mention it again. Instead he read the books for the next school year, too bored for words. His father also forbade John’s friends visiting – a rule John broke, as there was a tree right outside his window, which made a great ladder if you were determined not to let your father wreck your summer.

Rules were stupid, John established, and learned to break them without getting caught.

So when the next summer rolled around, John was known at school as maths genius and bad boy, the one who just didn’t care if the teacher said no. The one who smoked secretly in the bathroom and flipped off the principal.

John still wanted to be a pilot. But when, on the day he turned eighteen, he went to the recruitment office, the officer looked at him and shook his head. Not taking you, he said, I know about you and I knew your Dad. You’re trouble, Sheppard. The Marines might take you. Us? No way.

John spat on the desk and walked out.

Face hot, he walked along the tracks, thoughts running in circles and coming back to the fact that the Air Force wouldn’t take him, wouldn’t let him fly. But what now?

He went back to school to buy some time to figure it out and was handed another shock. Even though he hadn’t done anything, he was called to the principal’s office where the man explained to him with a satisfied smile that he’d gone bust. He’d passed every maths course with A+ and PhysEd with A-, but he’d flunked everything else. No surprise really, he couldn’t remember the last test he’d taken that wasn’t in maths.

After three years of John “Trouble” Sheppard, Principal Barainsky gloated over that fact quite a bit. He seemed to be looking forward to seeing John sweeping up trash or packing bags at Cubs.

John got out of there without another word and went over to Coney Island where he blew most of his money on the ferris wheel. But when the park closed and he had to get down, he’d decided to get serious.

He worked throughout the summer, ten hour shifts six days a week, then went back to school, and to Principal Barainsky’s bug-eyed surprise, he studied. Every day, and he used the money he’d earned to get tutoring in the subjects where he couldn’t remember anything from the last three years. He dove into all the classes he’d failed, and at the end of the first semester, managed a B- average. He stopped being trouble. He forced his average to a B+ by the end of the year, didn’t flunk a single course, and applied for a scholarship to college.

Mrs. Chun, his maths teacher, wrote him a letter of recommendation and called a friend of hers at State University of New York to get John in. And he did.

College was work, work, and more work. He studied, he slept, he had two jobs. He had no time to be trouble. But he could play numbers he’d hardly even dreamed of, and by the time college was done, John was offered a research grant which he took. And finally, he had time to be trouble again.


	5. There's No Such Thing as TMI, Is There

After a few trips offworld, Rodney had figured out several things about his new team.

Beckett was not only a fair surgeon, he had also brushed up on allergies (Rodney), had no idea how to react to a woman flirting with him (Cadman), and would take Sheppard’s equipment out of his hands if he thought the man needed rest, completely ignoring the outraged look that prompted.

Cadman had a crush on Beckett the size of a small house, always touching him, walking closely, smiling. It made Beckett nervous – the good doctor stuck close to Sheppard or Rodney whenever he could. Cadman noticed, and seemed to find it sweet. Beyond that blind spot – why she’d picked Beckett eluded him completely – she was competent, knew what she was doing, and could be counted on in a pinch.

Sheppard, whenever he thought that Rodney wasn’t paying enough attention to him, shot off at the mouth, talking about everything from numbers to ferris wheels, to Star Trek, to moose until Rodney told him to shove it. Then he seemed to be satisfied. Also, Radek had been right. Sheppard did as he was asked, offered his help without hesitation, but any tone of voice or phrasing sounding like an order made him clam up. At once.

Rodney tried to figure out how to get around that if he really had to give an order – like duck or run – without triggering Sheppard’s little flaw. He wasn’t going to go the whole nine yards of Freud and Jung, though – that would be an insult to Sheppard’s intelligence, so he cast around for another solution. In the end, on one of the very boring worlds, he settled on playing truth or dare with his team, using a local variety of berry instead of drinks.

Getting to know each other, he called it when his team stared at him as if he’d grown a second head, but in truth it was meant to show Cadman what was acceptable in flirting. If Beckett whinged to the wrong people and Sumner had Cadman charged for sexual harrassment, things would be very messy. Also, learning that Cadman as well as Rodney were human and had quirks of their own, lost a lot of Beckett’s nervousness. Good enough, Rodney figured, and teased Beckett only gently, getting him to relax enough to tease back.

For Sheppard, playing the game seemed to mean that it was okay and he could follow orders. Rodney upped the ante so gently that each of them had had their turn having to obey three orders before Sheppard ended up in the hot spot. For a moment, Rodney was afraid he’d spooked his wild card, but then Sheppard seemed to relax and took his turn. Rodney went easy on him, as he had on the others.

Occasionally, that psych degree really did come in handy.

Afterwards, Cadman came to him while he was on watch, sitting down next to him with her whetstone and knife.

“I suppose I can back off a bit, now,” Cadman said, casually, focussed on her knife.

Rodney raised his brow at her. “Ah?”

“With Carson. He’s much more relaxed now, and doesn’t need that much of a distraction anymore.” She looked up at Rodney and smiled, with just a tiny edge. “But I’m not going to stop completely. He really is a dish.”

“Each to their own, Cadman,” Rodney said, shaking his head. Who would have thought?

 

+++

 

All in all, John could have done with a little more boredom. As if it wasn’t enough that the storm was getting too close, that his team wasn’t trapped on the mainland, that Zelenka wasn’t down with concussion – no, he also had the Genii on his ass. Dr. Weir was trying to negotiate their leader Kolya, rather unsuccessfully, and John was starting to worry.

He argued with Weir that they couldn’t allow the city to fall into the hands of the Genii. She kept saying that there was bound to be another way, and that he should not lose hope. John had never felt so intensely frustrated before. Weir was making the wrong decision, and nothing he said could convince her that cooperation was a really stupid idea. She ordered him to suck it up – not in those words, but the intent was clear enough – and told him to fix the grounding station.

He stalled as much as he could, lying through his teeth and demanding impossible conditions until Kolya lost patience and slammed John’s face into a wall. When John spat blood in his face and told him to go fuck himself, preferably with a broken bottle, Kolya wiped off the blood with a contemplative expression, smiled, and got one of his goons to duct-tape John’s mouth shut, ignoring Dr. Weir’s shocked protests. Then he got into John’s face and told him that he was going to cut off pieces of Dr. Weir every five minutes that John didn’t work on the grounding station. That he wasn’t interesting in John talking and that Dr. Weir would be minus a finger right now if there was any more trouble.

As soon as the other goons let go of his arms, John grabbed for the tape. Kolya caught his hand and smiled again, saying that if John somehow lost the tape, John would be losing fingers as well.

Breathing hard through his nose, John wished Kolya was telepathic so he could hear everything John was thinking at him. One look at Weir convinced him that while he wouldn’t mind going down if it stopped Kolya, she didn’t feel the same way. But when he still hesitated, Kolya set the knife against the base of Weir’s thumb and met John’s eyes. So he got to work and promised himself revenge for every inch of tape over his mouth and around his head. The Genii goon had been rather enthusiastic.

Kolya watched them, speaking on the radio to Sumner who was apparently making things difficult for the Genii. John only listened with half an ear, concentrating on the grounding station, and on not breathing in rainwater. He worked as slowly as he dared, twice dropping instruments and trying, with nothing more than a look, to blame it on the rain. He got away with it once. The second time, Kolya twisted his arm and held his nose closed, effectively cutting off John’s air supply. John struggled, Weir yelled, and Kolya, having made his point, went back to the radio, playing cat and mouse with Sumner. John shuddered, and hearing that Sumner had managed to kill dozens of Genii all at once he smiled under the tape.

John’s tongue was swollen with thirst and he felt nauseous from the taste of blood in his mouth by the time Sumner managed to get rid of the Genii and rescue Weir. Meanwhile, Rodney had shouted Carson into piloting the damn Jumper through the eye of the storm – and seriously, how crazy was that? – back to Atlantis. Not that John had known what was happening outside, since Kolya had left him in a storage room and only found out afterwards when Cadman and Rodney came in, guns blazing.

Rodney looked really pissed off standing there with his P90 while Cadman tied up the Genii and Carson used a scalpel to get the tape off John’s face, muttering that he was sorry to hurt John, but didn’t have any acetone here. In fact, Rodney did not just look pissed, he looked like he was about to shoot anything that came through the door, up to and including Colonel Sumner. John wondered what merited that look and realized it was him. It really seemed a bit over the top. It was only duct tape, after all. John was still pondering this new development when Carson pulled the tape off and he couldn’t think of anything for a moment until the pain had faded a bit and Carson handed him a bottle of water.

He washed his mouth out, spat, then drank, eyes closing in relief, and when he opened them again, Rodney’s face once again did something funny, which might have been relief as well. But again, it was gone almost at once.

Rodney knelt next to him. “You all right?”

John nodded. “I’m fine.” His voice came out a bit harsh and he winced. Carson gave him more water and held on to him. Rodney had his hand on John’s shoulder, and Cadman came, too, handing him one of the Genii’s jackets to warm him up.

“Here. Don’t want to catch a cold, do you?”

John finally wrapped his head around the fact that they’d worried for him and that now his team needed to know that he was fine.

Despite being wet all the way to the bone, and the water dripping from his hair, the hours spent outside fixing a grounding station with a gun in his neck and tape on his face, he felt warm. But that only lasted until he realized they were going to be charcoal if they didn’t get going. He got up, slightly unsteady, finding that he could lean against Rodney’s shoulder.

“We need to get to the gateroom right now. Or we’re going to be fried to a crisp which would be the perfect end to my day, but on the whole I’d rather not.”

 

+++

 

Rodney and Cadman came along when Beckett sat John down in the infirmary and carefully cleaned tape residue off his face and neck. He’d begun checking for scratches when Martinez turned up and tried to bitch at Beckett that he ought to treat someone who needed it.

Beckett simply said, “I am working, don’t disturb me.” Martinez, judging from his color, was about to go ballistic. Rodney and Cadman exchanged a glance, got up and stood, shoulder to shoulder, between their scientists and the CMO. Martinez sputtered for a moment, mumbled something about damn misfits and left.

Rodney sighed. “How do you put up with the guy, Beckett?”

“Practice,” Beckett said absently. “Hand me that tube of salve. The blue one.”

Cadman gave it to him, not missing a chance to get close to the good doctor.

John’s eyes were closed, but he didn’t seem to be feeling badly, Rodney thought. More like – basking in sunlight, which was pretty ridiculous considering that the storm was still going on outside and John was still dripping wet.

“John? How are you feeling?” Rodney asked softly.

“Fine,” John said, still not opening his eyes. “And wet,” he added after a moment of reflection. Cadman threw a look at Rodney and left, without Rodney needing to say anything. Good woman.

“What happened?” Rodney asked.

Beckett’s hands stilled for a moment, but John didn’t even tense. “The Genii leader wanted me to fix the grounding station. I stalled him – he noticed and, well, you know. He threatened to cut Dr. Weir’s fingers off if I didn’t fix the damn thing.” He sighed. “Didn’t have much of a choice.”

Rodney laid his hand on John’s shoulder. “You did the right thing.”

John sighed again and opened his eyes. “I want to kill him.”

“So do I,” Beckett said, twisting the tube shut again. “And I don’t mind saying so, Rodney, if we run into the Genii again, I wouldn’t mind if this guy had an accident.”

John grinned up at him. “I have an idea or two. Do you have some of that biological glue?”

Rodney rolled his eyes at them. “What’s wrong with simply shooting the man?”

John blinked at him, eyes dancing. “How unsubtle. And if you shoot him, he won’t even suffer.”

“You don’t know where I was going to shoot him,” Rodney said.

At which point Cadman got back with towels and a set of dry clothes for John, and Rodney knew that he had his team.


	6. Crayfish and Lightswitches

After the episode with the Genii they actually got some rest, but only because they spent most of the time on a planet so boring that they’d sat down by a river and caught crayfish which Beckett said were safe to eat.

They spent the night and caught enough to have a nice dinner of crayfish – purple ones, admittedly, but they did go pink when cooked. Dr. Weir turned out to really like crayfish and sent them back to catch more. All in all they spent six happy days catching crayfish and sending it back to Atlantis and telling each other tall stories. Carson won by default because nobody could sit up anymore after his tale of Nessie, haggis and the Black Jack’s Lady which he’d met as a boy. All John knew was that he’d never look at sheep the same way again.

Then again, Rodney’s story of an elk duel out in the Northwest Territories – promptly dubbed Northwest Terrors by Cadman – had something, too. Still, something was bothering John about all this cameradie, and he kept thinking about it despite the storytelling and joking.

Hands and feet stained purple from crayfish shells, sunburnt and with sand in unmentionable places, they returned when nobody wanted to see crayfish anymore and they still had more of it in storage than anyone knew what to do with. Zelenka was waiting at the stairs to the gate room and fell into step with Rodney, talking at high speed as the team followed Rodney. But in the hallway, Rodney smiled at Zelenka and said he’d meet him later, he had to debrief his team first. Zelenka nodded, and vanished. Rodney looked after him as if he really wanted to go with him, but turned back to them, giving out his usual compliments about a job well done.

Something slipped into place for John, and as they dropped off their mission gear, he knew what had been bothering him.

“You’ve really bought into this forge-individuals-into-a-cohesive-unit bullshit, haven’t you?” Only when the words actually left his mouth, John realized that he was actually pissed off about that. Or rather, pissed off that he hadn’t noticed Rodney had been doing it at all.

Rodney turned to him, looking astonished, skin fairly brown, hands looking as if he’d stuck them in a pot of beetroot. “What?”

Carson opened his mouth as if to protest but Cadman shushed him. John dumped his mission gear with more force than strictly necessary. “Isn’t it enough that we work together? Do you have to pull us into this hive-mind thing as well?”

Rodney also dropped his vest, settling his hands on his hips. “What are you on about?”

“It’s just –“ he didn’t know. He couldn’t put it in words. He was offended, and flattered, and let’s not forget embarrassed that he hadn’t realized earlier. But what got him was that Rodney had been playing him, with the stupid game, the storytelling, the caring. John felt pandered to and it pissed him off.

Rodney was looking at him, annoyed now. “Yes? Complete sentence, please?”

John felt a fierce satisfaction - he'd gotten a rise out of Rodney. “You played us,” he accused, really getting into this. “It’s all a game? Make us your little clockwork soldiers, so Sumner will let you have your team.” He was breathing hard, furious. “The Mountie and his little band of brothers.”

“Hive-mind?” Rodney asked, pale and angry. Somewhere in there, John had obviously touched something raw. “Playing a game with you? Aren’t you just the center of the universe today? Listen, princess, surprisingly enough, the galaxies do not revolve around you. I’m so sorry to burst your bubble – if we don’t get our act together, we’re screwed.” His hands were balling into fists, but he kept his arms tightly by his sides. “Anything can kill us out there, but we still go and we all need to count on each other. All of us, damn it!”

John’s head ached but he forged on regardless. “You just want your gold star.”

Rodney was in his space instantly. “What part of getting killed are you not understanding?”

John narrowed his eyes and was just about to snarl back that it wasn’t about that when he was hit at chest-height with the flat side of a barrel of a P90. Carson’s P90.

“Calm down, both of you, now,” Carson ordered, accent thick and heavy. “Stop this arguing. John, sit down and think about what you said. Do you really think Rodney would do that to us?

“And Rodney, we know you worry about going offworld and losing us. Any of us.” His eyes fell on Cadman who looked like she wanted to be anywhere else and John, flushed and furious. “But don’t forget, we, John and I, we aren’t used to this.” Another gesture, this one encompassing them all and the whole situation. John became aware again of where he was, where they were, a gearing room, uniforms and guns, himself, wearing fatigues.

“Peace, both of you,” Carson said, sounding tired. “Don’t we have enough enemies out there without making each other enemies as well? Peace.” He withdrew the gun. “Be friends.”

Rodney was almost looking chagrined at having been so angry. “Sorry, Carson. You’re right.” He met John’s eyes squarely and put his hand on John’s shoulder. “It’s not a game to me, John.”

I understand, John wanted to say. But the game is up, and it will swallow me whole. You already have me jumping to your tune. But he just nodded, heat from Rodney’s broad hand on his shoulder searing him all the way to the bone.

 

+++

 

They didn't have any off-world missions scheduled, and with some distance John was able to stop being quite as furious about his esteemed team leader. John still thought that any kind of superior officer and related breeds were by definition highhanded egomaniacs, aspiring to minor dickhood. An entertaining thought which kept John happy and grinning until he got to work after the "weekend". But only until then, because on Atlantis, John was a lightswitch.

A tiny little genetic accident, and everybody and their kid brother and their dog and their turtle kept coming to him and going on about touch this, turn this on, find out what this does, and it kept interrupting not only his work but his offworld missions and his sleep as well. In the first days it had been cool and exciting, being able to make a lightshow just by touching something. Cool had worn off by the second week and the twentieth interruption of something that was actually important. Today, after at least two hundred, it was driving him crazy.

Simpson was already standing there, hopeful look on her face, when he came from breakfast (involving crayfish chips which tasted like krupuk but were bright pink). He touched her artifact, found out that it was some kind of toaster and advised her to take it to the kitchen, ignoring her offended look.

Martinez, looking highly unhappy, came in at ten and in a voice so polite that it had to hurt, resepectfully requested his presence in the infirmary to investigate a device that had turned itself on and nobody could figure out what it did. John went, looked, touched, thought at it, and told Martinez that it might be an early warning system for sewage overflow.

He missed lunch because Omeba had to be gotten out of a stasis chamber she’d accidentally stepped into and it took him two hours to figure out how she had managed to get herself defined by the Ancient system as a variety of fungus only found on juvenile terflos, whatever terflos might be. By the time he got to the mess hall, all that was left was something the cook of the day chose to call noodle salad. John figured this would only work for a given value of noodle salad and went back to the lab.

None of this would be so bad if he didn’t get at least three emails each hour asking him to touch something and Kavanagh bitching at Zelenka to just send John around the city touching things because he'd be more useful that way than any other.

By the time dinner rolled around, John had worked up a huge appetite. He’d just reached for his jacket, when Zelenka’s personal cross for his sins (John didn’t quite dare to imagine what they might be) walked in again in his ponytailed glory, shook a gelly-looking thing with a handle in his face and demanded the magic touch in a sarcastic voice. John was just about to tell the man what he was going to do with the gelly thing when a third player entered.

“Dr. Kavanagh.”

John inwardly groaned. Esteemed team leader and minor dick Rodney McKay. The day just got better and better.

Kavanagh didn’t turn but said, “Don’t bother me.”

“Dr. Kavanagh.”

John leaned back, partly to get away from the gelly thing, partly so he could see Rodney’s expression better, which promised entertainment in the near future.

Kavanagh didn’t seem to understand the situation because he finally turned but didn’t leave. “What is it?”

“Kavanagh –“

“That’s Dr. Kavanagh to you,” Kavanagh said, drawing himself up. It didn’t do much good.

Rodney smiled, and not in a nice way but his voice was soft as butter. “Oh? I do apologize. Then it’ll have to be Dr. McKay to you.” John’s eyebrows threatened to emigrate into his hairline. Ignoring Kavanagh’s sputtering, Rodney went on. “I realize that a man of your mental capabilities might not find the understanding necessary for this fact, but please try to pay attention. Dr. Sheppard is a valuable member of this expedition, and, indeed, of his offworld team.”

Oh, beneath the belt, Rodney, John thought admiringly. Kavanagh really wanted to go offworld. As in, he would have cut off his ponytail if that would get him a team. Unfortunately for him, not one team leader wanted to touch him with a ten foot pole. But Rodney was going on.

“Dr. Sheppard has two vital functions he fulfills brillantly – mathematical research here in this laboratory, and scientific expertise offworld. That he also possesses the ATA gene is fortunate, but not essential.” Rodney fixed Kavanagh with a glare. The man seemed to try to hide behind his glasses. “The fact that he does have the gene does not justify your attempts to continually interfere in his actual work. Request an appointment if you must or undertake the gene therapy as well –“ Rodney paused, then seemed to remember something. “But of course there is a slight risk involved in that, isn’t there? Would that be the reason why you haven’t requested the shot?” He bared his teeth and for just one moment, John was too turned on for words.

Rodney kept smiling. “In conclusion, write one hundred times: Dr. John Sheppard is not an on/off switch.” Kavanagh swallowed jerkily but didn’t move. “Now leave.”

Kavanagh fled, Rodney rolled his eyes and picked up the gelly thing. “It looks like a sex toy gone wrong. He was all worked up about this?”

John carefully relaxed all his muscles. “It’s not like he’s getting any in this city. Wouldn’t you be looking for something like that if you were him?”

Rodney just shook his head and grinned. “I’m off to the mainland. You get some actual dinner tonight, okay?”

John nodded. Rodney had defended him. And was not even mentioning it again.

Maybe he would have to rethink the dick issue.

 

+++

 

When Rodney got home from the mainland where the Athosians had been dropped off, it was past midnight. So when someone knocked right after he reported back, he was more than a little surprised.

John stood at his door, looking apprehensive. “Hi. Can I come in?”

Rodney stepped aside, too tired to argue. “Something wrong?”

“No,” John said, standing in the middle of the room as if he didn’t know what he was doing there.

Rodney pulled off his jacket and boots. “Then isn’t it a bit late for movie night?”

“That’s not it.” Another long hesitation, then John said, carefully, “I’m here to apologize. For what I said in the gearing room.”

Rodney blinked. “What?”

“I was out of line. I’m sorry I accused you of trying to – you know. It was wrong, and I shouldn’t have said it.” John looked down, casting his face in shadow. “I was more angry at myself because I didn’t notice earlier.”

Rodney stood there, boots in his hand and wished he was more awake. And that he didn’t have to have this conversation. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not,” John said, looking up again. “I just – I don’t do teams well. I don’t do orders well. But you know that. And you – aren’t trying to – I’m not saying this well. I’m trying to say I like you and I like Carson and Laura, and I like being on your team.” He took a deep breath. “So – I was wrong. You weren’t trying to turn me into a drone. Or – what else I said. And I’m sorry I lost it.”

Rodney set his boots down, hardly knowing what to say, but John went on. “You may not know this – oh, what am I saying, of course you know. I don’t trust people easily. But I do trust you.”

“John-“

“Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that. But it’s late, I should let you get some sleep.” And with that he was gone, door opening and closing for him too quickly for Rodney to stop him.

Rodney sank back down on the bed, resting his head in his hands. But something inside him was singing.


	7. We Are The Misfits

Rodney knew that Sumner and the rest of the military figured that he and his team were the joke of Atlantis. He couldn’t bring himself to care much. But they did get the boring missions, and it was only a matter of time until his team figured that out.

That time came on a hilly, green and brown planet, when John asked out of the blue, “So what’s this misfits deal?”

Rodney nodded to himself. The time had come and he’d known it from the moment they’d stepped through the gate on this mission, sent off with the muttered words “Team Misfit has left the building.”

Beckett turned to John. “Misfit?”

Cadman just shrugged. “Why bother thinking about it? It’s not like it’s a big deal.”

Beckett looked incensed. “Well, it’s a big deal to me if my team is treated disrespectfully. And why do they, anyhow?”

Cadman glanced over at Rodney, probably because Rodney was the only one who would understand this as she did. “Carson, will you please come off it? It’s not worth it.”

John fiddled with the lifesigns detector, shoulders tense. “They figure we’re a joke.”

Beckett stared at him, Cadman rolled her eyes, and Rodney wished for the first time that he’d picked someone a little less intelligent. He could have done without this conversation.

“Yes, they do,” Rodney said, giving in to the inevitable. “Colonel Sumner doesn’t exactly consider us the cream of the crop.”

“Oh,” Beckett said in a small voice.

Cadman nodded, looking over the hills. “Yeah, oh.” Nobody said anything for a moment, and she seemed to come to a decision even though she was still not meeting anybody’s eyes. “Look, we’re the last team they like to send anyplace where there actually might be something important. We’re the team who gets the dried-out boring worlds where nothing’s happened for the last five thousand years. We’re the team the whole locker room laughs at, and you know what?” She turned around, P90 pointed at the ground, meeting all of their eyes in turn. “I wouldn’t want any other team if I could pick from all of Atlantis and the SGC. We’re good together. And nobody’s died from a bit of teasing.”

Rodney wanted to applaud her. Beckett was looking flattered and actually not panicky at all and Sheppard had lost something of the slouch.

“Well said, Cadman,” he said. “And I second that. Also, someone has to explore these planets as well, and our team gets hurt a lot less than all the others. I consider that a good thing.”

“So you don’t mind that we’re Team Misfit?” Sheppard asked with a hint of mischief.

Rodney gently pushed him in the right direction. “We don’t have to be Team Misfit. How about Team Joke?”

Cadman laughed. “Team Comes-In-Last.”

“I like that,” Beckett said. “But it’s too wordy. How about Team Omega?”

“Team D’regs,” Sheppard suggested with a glint in his eye. Rodney turned to him, delighted.

“Not Team You Bastard?”

“Oh, you would joke about that. The greatest mathematician in the world is a camel.”

“Well, you’re the greatest mathematician in this world.”

Then they had to explain to Cadman and Beckett who Terry Pratchett was and what the camels were about and that took the rest of the mission.

 

+++

 

This just about took the cake, John thought, trapped in a locker room under self-regulated quarantine, and with absolutely nothing to do. He leaned back against the wall and wondered what the hell people were doing out there now for this to be necessary.

Carson and Rodney were at the door, trying to get some information out of Grodin, without success, although in fact, any information would have been an improvement. Cadman was sitting back, surprisingly relaxed. John sighed and broke out his stash of sweet beans, import of Boring World Number Two Thousand And Twenty Two. They sort of tasted like popcorn and made you just a little high if you had too many.

Rodney and Carson had given up and were wandering back, Rodney looking annoyed and Carson morose. John offered his beans.

“Well, looks like we’re stuck here for the duration. Are those the sweet beans?”

John nodded and offered the bag to Rodney. “Freshly traded for a basket of crayfish shells. I’m thinking new currency.”

Cadman took a bean and popped it in her mouth. “So what do we do with ourselves? Because I don’t think this is not gonna be over in an hour or two.”

Rodney grinned at her. “Well, we’ve played Truth or Dare, now how about I Never?”

Carson swallowed his bean the wrong way and had to be slapped on the back, giving Cadman a good opportunity to get personal again. “What? What good is that supposed to do? Anyway, we’ve got no alcohol – oh no.” He stared at John’s bag. “Well. But I draw the line at Spin the Bottle!”

Cadman laughed. “It’s going to pass the time at least. I’ll start. I never – did drugs.”

John’s and Carson’s hands collided in the bag. Carson looked up and blushed. “I went to medical school. What did you expect?”

John ate his bean, then said, “I never played hockey.”

Rodney took a bean and sighed. “I shouldn’t have suggested it. I never played Spin the Bottle.”

All three of the others ate beans. “Carson, your turn,” said Cadman, still chewing.

Carson swallowed and said, “I never joined the military.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Cadman said as she handed Rodney a bean and took one for herself. “I never got a Ph.D.”

“Unfair,” Carson said as he distributed the beans to himself and John, then started as Rodney took a bean as well. “You? What field?”

Rodney grinned. “For me to know and you to wonder about.” He ate his bean as John went on.

“I’ve never worn a uniform.”

Cadman and Rodney groaned at that, ate, then Cadman said, “I never kissed a woman.”

Her fellow men had more beans. Carson sighed. “You know, that’s unfair, too. I never kissed a man.”

Cadman and Rodney ate, and Rodney said, “I never went to England.”

Carson growled at him and stuck his hand in the bag. “And despite my youthful foray into the world of chemical happiness, I never felt this high.”

John blinked at him and ate a bean. “You must not have been doing it right. I never had a one night stand.”

Nobody ate. John looked astonished. “Damn. Does that mean I go again? Uh – I never played pool.”

Cadman and Carson ate, then Rodney said, “Your turn, Cadman.”

John sat up. “You know, you don’t actually have to call her Cadman. She does have a first name.”

Rodney nodded sagely. “I know she does.”

John waited, but nothing more was forthcoming.

Cadman patted John on the knee and said, “It’s a military thing. And I’ve never been in a quarantine before.”

Carson stared at the beans for a moment then said, “I think one is not going to be enough.” He took four beans.

Rodney, looking a little incredulous and impressed, asked, “Is genetics this infectious?”

Carson smiled the smile of the happily stoned and shook his head. “No. But I worked at the exotic animals zoo during uni. Those things bite.”

John threw Rodney a worried look. “Has he had enough?”

Cadman grinned at him, put her head in Carson’s lap, and said, “Hi, Carson.” Carson blinked down at her dreamily. Cadman sat up again. “Yep, I think he’s had it. How about a nap, Carson?”

They put Carson down on a bench, and by common consent, packed up the beans. John asked, “So what’s your degree in?”

Rodney grinned, feeling overly happy himself. “Guess, and I’ll tell you if you’re right.”

Cadman yawned. “Politics.”

“No, cold.”

“Cold?” John asked, thoroughly amused. If he’d known it would take only a few beans to loosen them up this much, he’d have gotten a lot more.

But he never did get to hear what field Rodney’s doctorate was in because Dr. Weir called and they had to sober Carson up in a hurry to find a cure against the reason for the quarantine and hide the beans from Sumner.


	8. First Comes Marriage

Their next mission took them to a planet that had a dark red sky, despite it being day and bright outside, and grass of a strange yellow color that crackled when they walked on it. Rodney led them out from the valley the Stargate was in and into a forest which wasn’t growing out of the earth but out of a kind of amber crystal.

For once, in the forest, there was an actual village with people in it. Rodney was surprised, then immediately told himself not to be – even Team Misfit was bound to catch a populated planet at some point. The people were tall, with a nice brown skin color and bright green eyes. Rodney smiled at them and Beckett politely stepped forward and asked to see the village chief.

The Chief turned out to look much like the others, except for being one of only two villagers dressed in black and he was accompanied by his wife, who was the other one dressed in black. In fact, Rodney realized, almost all the adults came in pairs – man and woman, two men or two women.

The Chief and his wife welcomed them, and it took Beckett only a few minutes to get a panicky look and excuse himself to talk to his teammates.

“Rodney, I think we have a problem,” Beckett said, looking a little appalled. “These people, they are all married.”

John threw him a sideways look. “These people may actually have fresh food that isn’t crayfish, so I think I’ll forgive them for marrying.” He gave Beckett an earnest look. “Even though it’s very shocking.”

“No, you don’t understand. They’re all married. Only children aren’t married, and they’ll only trade with us at all if we’re adults, too,” Beckett said miserably.

Rodney looked around. “But that guy over there, he’s single. What about him?”

“Widowed,” said Beckett, sighing. “But he has to marry again soon.”

Rodney hesitated, finding the whole thing just a little silly. “So we tell them we’ve got our wives and husband at home or that we’re widowed ourselves. What’s the problem?”

Beckett stepped closer and shook his head. “You’re not listening to me. They wouldn’t believe that. The Chief – it’s not the man who’s the Chief, it’s both of them. Either we’re two married couples or we’re children and can’t be talked to.”

Rodney shrugged. “We pretend, then. Can’t be that difficult.”

Beckett looked unhappy, John opened his mouth as if to say something, and Cadman grinned.

“Dibs on the doctor! This doctor,” she said and immediately latched onto Beckett’s bicep. Beckett looked panicky.

John closed his mouth again, then drawled, “That’s what I was about to point out, Rodney. Unless you’re going to have a sex change –“

Rodney grinned at him. “Oh, but I’m in charge. That means you’re the wife.”

“We’re not really doing this, are we?” Beckett protested, pointing at Cadman. “Are we?”

John half-smiled, crookedly, at Rodney. “Wanna go steady?”

Beckett moaned.

Rodney put his arm around John’s shoulders, having to reach up a little. “Beckett, please tell the nice Chief-Duo that we’re ready to talk to them.”

John didn’t move away, but protested through his teeth, “Why should I be the wife? Does something about me spell intrinsic bottomness to you? Rodney?”

Rodney was saved from having to answer by the Chief, but figured that it wasn’t going to be over.

 

+++

 

John decided to suffer in silence, mainly because he really wanted some fresh fruit and meat that didn’t come dried in foil and even more importantly, did not have anything to do with waterdwelling animals. There were only so many ways one could cook crayfish, and they’d already found them all. But he also kept his mouth shut because Rodney was standing so close to him that he could feel his bodyheat and smell his soap and sweat. Which was almost too much, but at the same time not enough.

Rodney kept back as Carson spoke with the Chief, arm still casually around John, but now not draped over his shoulders but lightly clasping his waist, hand settled on his hip as if it wanted to stay there forever.

He let Carson’s words wash over him, half closing his eyes and enjoying the feeling while it lasted. He’d had women, women he’d held this close and closer, who were warm and soft, or cool and strong, but he’d rarely gone out to find a woman. They found him, attracted by his face and hair and brains – oh yes, and the occasional spot of trouble. He’d met Annie that way, in a moment of shared craziness on a high and fast ride, and they’d tumbled down on the grass afterwards, and she’d laughed with him, hair all over her face, and he’d known right then that they would go somewhere and fuck, without him doing anything. He was the kind of person who sex happened to.

But in the morning, Annie was still there, dressed in her bra and his leather jacket and before he’d really known what was happening, he had a lover.

But Annie had never understood the lure of numbers, and in the end, Annie had left him because she only understood the thrill of the ride, not the engineering behind it.

He came out of his reverie when Rodney’s elbow made contact with his ribs.

“Come on, John, let’s go and see the fascinating temple these nice people told us about.”

John bit back a sigh and nodded, still a little lost.

The temple didn’t help. Not only was it full of porn, they were asked to admire every sculpture and every wallhanging. The guide helpfully pointed out to John and Rodney those pictures of two men, married of course. When the guide went over to help a flushing Carson and a Cadman who was almost looking impressed, he felt Rodney sigh in relief.

“This is unfair. Why couldn’t this happen to Sumner’s team?” Rodney said softly.

John shook his head and looked down. No luck there. The floor had a mosaic. “Maybe it did and they just never told anyone. Just think of the report you’ll get to write.”

Rodney rolled his eyes at him. “Oh yes. I can just picture that. Now all that’s left is what we’ll call this place. Planet Porn?”

John bit back a chuckle. “The Married Planet?”

Rodney sighed and closed his eyes, looking tired. “The Planet We Had To Pretend Having Sex On?”

“Oh yeah, that – what?” John stared at him. Rodney stared back.

“Weren’t you listening earlier? They think having sex in a foreign place means we trust them and are trustworthy ourselves. So we get to pretend to have sex, too.”

John was aware his mouth was open but no sound came out. Rodney tugged him over to the side, away from the guide. “I can see you’ve taken to this wife thing immediately, not listening to a word I’ve said.”

“Uh,” John said, thoughts racing like a hyperactive hamster in his treadmill. Pretend to have sex. More, pretend to have sex with Rodney. But – he started grinning and found he couldn’t stop. Rodney looked unsettled.

“What?”

“I just realized.”

“Yes?”

“While we pretend to have sex, you know – Carson and Laura will be pretending, too.”

Rodney’s mouth twitched. John bit his tongue in order not to laugh.

Rodney then got a very, very fascinating expression which John decided to call utter bedevilment. “You realize we’ll never get him offworld again? Unless he’s wearing a chastity belt.”

John choked.

 

+++

 

Dinner on the Married Planet was excellent, Rodney found. Gamey meat, vegetables, some kind of grain, fruit. None of it with any citrus whatsoever. Perfect. For the first time in far too long, he felt not only full but sated, palate satisfied as well as stomach. John had collapsed against him, probably dead from overeating. Rodney prodded him.

“If you eat like that, how come you haven’t got any meat on your bones?”

“Perfect metabolism,” John said, not moving. “Whistle.”

“Excuse me?”

“Whistle. So my bed comes here.” Rodney snorted and pushed himself up. “Where are you going?"

"To that nice guest hut they've prepared for us. Come on, boys and girl, let's turn in."

With varying degrees of protest, his team got up and wandered toward the hut, a two-room affair with separate doors with small statues in front of them.

John looked suspicious. "What are those funny little statues?”

“Don’t know. Let Beckett ask.”

John poked Beckett, who was hanging back, probably so he could give Cadman, whose ponytail just vanished into the hut, a little privacy.

“Hey, Carson, ask your friend what the statues are for, okay?”

Beckett glared at him, but turned to the guide for a quick conversation. As he spoke, the good doctor started blushing again, and John muttered, “This is going to be good.”

Beckett turned back to them. “Marital aids.”

John's brows went up. “What?”

“Marital aids. You know,” Beckett said, obviously not comfortable with the whole idea.

“You mean like massage oil or honey dust?” John asked, as if feeling his way towards the answer, but his eyes were twinkling. Rodney could have told him that wasn’t going to work.

Beckett groaned. “No, John, you bleeding twit, I mean like dildos! They even have instructions on them. Now if you want to know more, ask them yourself, I’m going to bed.” He stalked off into the hut, its curtain closing behind him.

John muttered to Rodney, “He’s forgotten Laura’s in there, hasn’t he?”

Rodney nodded. “Yes, I think he has. But he’ll remember in a minute.”

There was a shout from the hut. Rodney nodded. “Yep, he remembers.” There was a crash.

John pushed aside the curtain to their half of the hut. “You know, this may not have been that bright an idea.”

Rodney grinned to himself. “You ate this dinner and you can still say that?" He gave John a little push in the small of his back. "Come on, honey.”

He went after John and looked around the dark roomy place. There was a bed-like structure, a table with a water bowl and some fruit, and something which might have been a chamberpot.

John yawned. “I’ve really got to invent a bed that comes when I call.”

“Put it on the list, but after the Kavanagh-repellent, please.”

Next door, Cadman sounded as if something was sort of funny, Carson mumbling back, sounding not panicky at least but depressed.

And John next to him was undressing.

Rodney closed his eyes for a moment, then stripped methodically. Vest, jacket. Boots, socks. Holster, pants. He swallowed hard, and glanced at John, who was in nothing more but boxers and t-shirt, all long lines and flat planes, standing there unconcernedly, fingers idly scratching at his belly with his shirt rucked up and staring into space.

Rodney could fall in love with this. Not just the body which was more than passing fair, but this way of standing, shoulders leaning back casually against empty air, hip pushed out just so, simply being in every fiber of John’s stance.

Next door, Cadman sounded conciliatory and said something about having received instructions on using the zelesh from their guide.

John turned around, frowning, and mouthed “Zelesh?” at Rodney, who shrugged and spread his arms, indicating that he didn’t know either.

Cadman seemed to be reading the instructions.

“First, wash with water.”

John glanced at Rodney and the water bowl. Rodney shrugged again.

“Second, anoint with oil from the cana tree.”

Rodney unconsciously looked around for something which might be cana oil, whatever that was, and saw John glancing around as well.

“Thirdly, while your husband plows you, plow him with the zelesh.”

Rodney froze, then choked, doubling over. John’s shoulders shook with mirth, but their laughter was covered by Beckett yelling.

Rodney felt blindly for the mattress for support, sinking down on it, and finding that an enraged Scotsman could take any Marine in a game of insult. John joined him on the mattress, nearly falling down, shaking the whole structure with his silent laughter, tears in his eyes. “P-picard on Risa-“ he choked out between stifled bouts of laughter.

By the time they could calm down and not start laughing again as soon as they met each other’s eyes, Beckett had wound down enough for Cadman to tell him to calm down, she wasn’t plowing anything that didn’t want to be plowed, which set them off again. Rodney actually had to jam his fist in his mouth and wondered how he was supposed to concentrate on anything while that was going on on the other side of the wall!

But amazingly, John was calming down, and sat up, putting his face close to Rodney’s. “Let’s be the quiet couple here, okay?”

Rodney nodded, for a moment wishing it was Radek here, with whom he could have sex, and who would consider this a challenge to have as much sex as possible to impress the villagers and the neighbors. But here was John, and he really didn’t think he could concentrate while listening to Cadman telling Beckett to relax and not be so damn uptight about the whole thing.

But then John started moaning wordlessly, and Rodney could only spare a moment to be grateful that there were no words because he didn't think he could deal if John started screaming his name or something along those lines. It was going to be difficult enough facing any of them come morning. It was funny, he could see that, but with Cadman and Beckett next door and John ten centimeters away from him, all three of them making sex sounds, he was torn between embarrassment, laughter, and arousal.

John hadn't seemed to notice yet. He'd leaned back on his arms, head tilted up, going "ah, ah, yes, mmm, yes, right there", and Rodney felt obliged to join in, feeling ridiculous and awkward. If this had been Radek, yes, but even then -. He gave a long moan and tried to figure out how to sound like he was coming without making a fool out of himself. At least Beckett and Cadman were more quiet now, murmuring, making soft noises. They were actually good at pretending.

Rodney sighed and let himself fall into all this, fall into the pretense, and paid a little more attention to John's moans and decided on counterpoint. John was still murmuring encouragement and appreciation of something that was not even happening, and Rodney was half-hard, and gave up all hope of getting out of this with his dignity intact.

He frowned a little when the next room was getting louder again, and enthusiastic. Cadman moaning yes, yes, Carson, Beckett making little gasping sounds, and suddenly John’s eyes went wide and he went silent.

Rodney stared into them, almost black in the darkness, seeing something there he was about to name, but then John's eyes closed and Rodney realized why John had stopped. Cadman and Beckett weren’t pretending anymore.

John was frozen next to him, and that was okay because Cadman and Beckett were making enough noise for four people. John’s eyes were squeezed shut, and he shook slightly, turning away from Rodney, and was apparently biting back laughter.

“Who knew,” he whispered, twitching, “Carson had it in him?”

Rodney had to agree. Cadman sounded like she was two minutes from coming, and that was more than he’d ever wanted to know about her. Then she screamed something about plowing and John lost it, curling into a ball and Rodney wished he could erase the last ten minutes from his life. It didn’t get better when John choked out, “I guess he really does have something in him!”

Rodney groaned and rolled off the bed. John was still laughing, gasping, “Revenge for the Prostate Exam! Film at eleven!”

Rodney hit him with a pillow.


	9. Then Comes Love

They returned to Atlantis the evening of the next day, bone tired. John had managed a catnap or two, but mostly, Laura and Carson had been too loud and distracting. In the morning, Rodney had simply looked at their team members and shaken his head. John actually found it funny. Laura had her shirt zipped up all the way and Carson was walking unnaturally straight, not meeting anyone’s eyes.

It was such an invitation, John couldn’t help himself. “Nice posture, Carson.”

Carson said nothing. In fact, he was so subdued all morning that Rodney had to make the arrangements for the food, looking a little worried about him.

They ended up collecting most of it themselves, and were dead on their feet when the last travois of game, fruit, and grain was sent to Atlantis. John went back first, the way he always did, telling Dr. Weir what they had found and that they were all fine. Carson and Laura went together, not looking at each other, and Rodney brought up the rear.

John waited until his whole team had come through the event horizon, then sat down on the stairs leading up to the control room and leaned back while the bustle started. Sixteen hours of work on a night with hardly any sleep. Great. He really would have to invent that bed. He contemplated falling asleep right here when a voice, hated and despised, bitched.

“Will you be careful, you jarhead grunt! That could have seriously injured me!”

John opened his eyes. Kavanagh was glaring at Laura, who had apparently just put down a case of vegetables.

“Sorry, Dr. Kavanagh -“ Cadman began, but was interrupted.

“I don’t ask that much. Just keep it out of my way, you clumsy cow.”

John got up and out of the corner of his eye saw Rodney move as well, hoping one of them would get there before Cadman stuck her complimentary zelesh up Kavanagh’s – nose. They needn’t have bothered.

Carson neatly stepped around Cadman, apparently pushed beyond his limit, hauled back, and let fly with a well-aimed right hook at Kavanagh’s nose. Kavanagh staggered back, howling. Carson raised his fist again, and he jumped back even further.

Cadman stood, transfixed, as Carson turned around and asked, almost shyly, “Nobody messes with my girl?” The whole gateroom seemed to be waiting.

Cadman stared at him, and for a moment, John wondered if they were going to be fishing the zelesh out of Carson’s nose. But then she smiled, stuck her P90 into the case of vegetables, and kissed Carson soundly.

Unexpectedly, Sergeant Bates started to applaud. John stared at him, then sighed and sat back down when Bates was joined by some of the Marines, and Dr. Weir looked suspiciously as if she also wanted to. John laughed and clapped as well, meeting Rodney’s eyes, grinning. Rodney just shook his head, and sat down next to John, P90 in his lap.

He smiled, enjoying the simple feeling of Rodney next to him and his friends in love in front of him. Carson and Laura were still kissing, and by now there were whistles and catcalls.

“Isn’t that against the rules?” John asked idly, noting that Rodney’s knee was almost touching his and feeling a pang at the thought that an hour ago, he’d been Rodney’s husband.

Rodney chuckled. “Rules, out here? No. Anyhow, we’re Team Misfit. We make our own rules.”

John laughed and smiled contentedly as Carson and Laura finally broke the kiss, wondering why he hadn’t thought of kissing Rodney on the Married Planet.

Then Sumner turned up, and the food had to be gotten into storage, and the moment was gone.

 

+++

 

Once all the food had been stored, and Rodney had given Cadman the requisite lecture about being careful and her professional conduct, it was near midnight and everyone was finally free to leave. John and Rodney decided to go to the mess hall to have dinner themselves. Beckett and Cadman had absented themselves, zelesh in pack.

Rodney yawned, painfully aware that he had been awake for over thirty hours. John next to him wasn’t any more lucid, which might explain why he almost bowled Radek over.

“Hello Rodney, here you are, very good. Are you happy?”

Rodney blinked and tried to get his brain in gear. But Radek didn’t give him the chance to say anything.

“I have something to tell you, big and wonderful. Well, not wonderful for you, but we haven’t had any time for weeks now.”

Rodney tried to interrupt and ask if it could wait – one day was hardly going to make a difference – but Radek was on a roll.

“You see, I have found love. Love of my life, wonderful, grand, and you understand, she does not want to share.”

John next to Rodney was making choking noises again, but all Rodney could say was, "What?”

Radek nodded seriously. “Yes, I know. It surprised me too. But she is wonderful woman, strong and tall and, you know –“ He made gestures in front of his chest, shame-faced.

Rodney said, “What?”

Radek nodded. "Will you be all right with this?" He waited almost anxiously for a moment, but Rodney was incapable of speech. "I have thought a lot about it, and it's very important to me that you are happy. I know this must hurt you, but please understand. It's like - fresh coffee, or mist over the river, just beautiful and true. Rodney, you're not saying anything. Are you all right?"

Rodney opened his mouth, then shut it again. What could he possibly say? He was only wondering when his friend with benefits had turned into a romantic hero.

Radek reached up and gripped his neck, resolve in his eyes and went on tiptoe to kiss his forehead. “Rodney, I will miss you. But I love. I love. But you now be happy. You will not be alone. I am sure of it. You will find someone else.” He smiled painfully and took a step back. “Now I will go. Sbohem.” And was gone.

Rodney stood, the kiss still burning on his skin, aware of John next to him, of John hesitantly touching his arm.

“Rodney?”

It was too big. “I need something to drink.”

John nodded. “Okay. We’ll get you some coffee.” And he steered Rodney to a chair and found some coffee for them both.

And since John was John, he couldn't keep it behind his teeth.

"So. You and Zelenka."

Rodney nodded, staring into his cup and wondering when the world had decided that he needed a kick in the complacency.

"So - you okay?"

Rodney shrugged and drank. "Yeah. I think so. It's just-"

"Yeah?"

"I just had a relationship conversation without the relationship." He looked up at John, feeling his mouth twist. "I think I really need something to drink."

"Nagaljew has that still running."

Rodney nodded. "Lousy pink vodka?"

"He managed to clear the pink," John said casually.

"Good." Rodney got up, then stopped. "What color is it now?"

John grinned. "Lavender."

Rodney groaned. "This is just my week."

 

+++

 

When Carson turned up for lightswitch duties the morning after looking really unhappy, John decided privately to postpone the requisite teasing. Plus, he wasn't going to rib Carson in front of Miko and two Marines who also had the gene.

This little convention of ATA genes was Rodney's solution for the interruptions. John had laughed at first, not believing this was ever going to work, but figuring it was at least worth a try. To his surprise, all the other gene-owners had fallen on the thought of a meeting every three days just for the turning on of Ancient artifacts like starved wolves on sheep. It seemed that they all had become really annoyed by all the interruptions, even Miko who was usually timid as a mouse.

So they had - well, not asked, precisely, more like informed Dr. Weir that they weren't going on they way they had been and that all of Atlantis got three hours every three days of touching and thinking at inanimate objects. At first their great white leader had been surprised, apparently not realizing that five people just were not enough for a whole city of stuff. Then, faced with a barrage of recorded incidents of random people shoving things at them, she folded, quickly.

So here they were, John and Carson working in tandem with the more complicated items, Miko and the Marines faster with the smaller stuff.

John let Carson brood for a while, then asked, "So how are you?"

"I'm fine."

Okay, if that was all, this was probably bad. "Sick?"

"No."

"Okay."

They worked in silence for a moment or two longer. John thought of it as letting the line play out. Give a man enough rope, and he'll hang himself.

"It's Lieutenant Cadman," Carson finally blurted out.

Bingo. John looked over, studiously casual. "Not calling her Laura, then?"

Carson shook his head, unhappily detaching what had turned out to be a fuel cell. "I don't think I can."

Oh, for - had the man never had a girlfriend before? John took the fuel cell away from Carson and glared at him. "Carson, this may come as a surprise to you, but she's your - girl, as you proclaimed in the Gateroom." Carson winced. "Of course you can call her Laura."

Carson shook his head. "But she can't be."

John stopped, took Carson's arm and dragged him off to a corner with mostly small stuff and no gawkers. "Okay, you've officially lost it. Or lost me - I thought you wanted her!"

"I do!" Carson said. "But don't you see, I can't. If I - she - Sumner will break up the team, John. And I can't want that," he finished miserably.

John bit his lip. Pegasus Galaxy, meet Dr. Carson Beckett, geneticist, surgeon, panic man and overthinker. "Carson, if that was true, don't you think he would already have done it?"

Carson looked panicky. "No, of course not. I've never even seen her since last night."

He hadn't - John took him by the arm and dragged him out the door, past Kavanagh who was opening his mouth to protest, but one look shut him up easily enough. John activated his radio.

"Rodney? Where are you?"

"Going to the gym. You okay?"

"Yeah, fine. Meet me outside by the zombie ficus."

"Five minutes," Rodney said and the radio clicked.

Carson blinked at him. "What are you doing? Aren't we supposed to do the meeting-?"

John kept dragging him. "Yeah, I know, but getting your head out of your ass is more important." Carson flinched. John mentally cursed. Sore subject apparently. He said nothing for a minute or two, then went on. "Carson, you're worrying yourself to death, and honestly you really don't have to." He threw open the door outside. "Rodney!"

"I'm here," Rodney said, coming across the platform, passing the ten thousand year old plant. "What's up?"

"Rodney, Carson here just told me that he didn't see Laura since they were in the Gateroom and thinks the team will be split up if she's his - girl." Rodney looked at them. "Well, tell him he's wrong!"

"You're wrong," Rodney said sarcastically. "Dr. Beckett, nobody is going to break up this team."

Carson didn't seem to believe them. "But from what I heard on the Antarctica base, the fraternization rules prohibit this."

"They do," Rodney said. John shot him a look saying, you're not helping. Rodney ignored him. "But our situation is a bit different. We're completely cut off from anyone to fraternize with, except each other. Unless you count that planet - never mind. Yes, it's against the rules, but nobody is going to even try to enforce them."

John grinned. "And if they do? We're Team Misfit, we won't care. Rules? Bend them, bend them till they almost break and then break them with a smile." Rodney laughed, and Carson looked a bit better. "So go to her quarters and call her Laura."

Rodney put his hand on Carson's shoulder. "Doctor, there's no reason not to. And while Dr. Rules Are For Other People here may be prejudiced, in this instance I agree with him. She really likes you. Go call her Laura."

Carson blushed, nodded, then walked off quickly. John shook his head after him. "I really like the guy, but god, how can anyone be such a momma's boy?"

Rodney leaned back against the railing. "I like him, too, but quite honestly, I'm just glad Cadman takes him out of the dating pool."

John laughed, a little shamefaced. "I know what you mean. And she'll make him buy his own socks. If he could, here."

Rodney grinned. "Was that all or do you need some dating advice yourself?"

John smiled at him, aiming for really serene. "And that would involve you how?"

Rodney punched him lightly. "I'll go to the gym then, since my expertise is not appreciated here."

John waved after him, then realized he would have to go back and explain that Carson wasn't going to be available for lightswitching anymore today. Damn. Every silver lining had a cloud.

But then, things were going really well. What was a little rain among friends?


	10. Band of Brothers

On Dagan, Team Misfit's luck ran out.

“Dr. Sheppard. How surprising to hear your voice.”

Rodney saw John snarling, drawing breath to answer, and gripped his arm hard. John looked at him and he silently shook his head. No, he tried to say with nothing but that look, don’t. Not now. Not when we’re trapped in this chamber, Cadman is up there unconscious or dead, and our lives depend on not provoking Kolya.

And because I don’t want to see you with a bullet hole between your eyes instead of just duct tape over your mouth and I know Beckett feels the same way.

Carson was looking up at the square of sky, not panicky but intense; something in his eyes spoke to Rodney of terror, the kind felt for another person.

Rodney breathed deeply, then called, "What is it you want? And what have you done with Cadman?" John was standing next to him, silent and sullen, triggered so far that Rodney had no idea how to calm him down before there was a mess.

The voice from above sounded amused. "Cadman? The woman, I assume - she's had to step away for a moment. As for what I want - the ZPM in the long run, but for now, your name will do."

"Staff Sergeant Rodney McKay, Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Let me talk to Cadman."

Kolya shook his head. "Not right now, Staff Sergeant. The ZPM, if you please."

"I need proof that she's alive and unharmed," Rodney shouted up.

There was a pause, then Kolya nodded. "You may send your weapons and radios up. We will come down, along with your teammate. Please do not try to attack us; we have an unbelievably large tactical advantage of you. It would not be wise."

Rodney looked at Carson, who looked as if he was praying and held out his hand. "Give me your gun. We'll do as he says for now."

Carson handed over his P90 wordlessly, then the radio. Rodney turned to John who was holding onto the weapon like it was a lifeline. Their eyes met, and for a moment, Rodney was afraid that John would turn this into a gunfight and that they would die here. But then John handed over his gun and radio and turned away, not watching as Rodney wrapped them into his jacket and tied them to the rope. They were pulled up.

He unobtrusively kept hold of John’s arm when the Genii came down into the cave, as much to provide a focus for himself as to prevent John from going for Kolya’s throat. Then he had to do the same for Beckett when Cadman’s limp body was lowered on a rope tied to her ankles. She truly was only unconscious, though, and at least Beckett breathed a little easier, kneeling down next to her and keeping his hand on the side of her neck, as if keeping track of her pulse. Rodney didn't think Kolya was fooled, but he didn't stop Beckett.

Then two of the Genii pushed John towards Kolya, while the others kept their guns pointed at Beckett and Rodney.

Kolya, in a voice so soft it was more dangerous than any shout or scream, said, "Dr. Sheppard. You'll find the hidden ZPM for me."

And what Rodney had been dreading from the moment the Genii had turned up became reality. John, with a smile as sweet as honeyed milk, said, "Write that on a piece of paper, roll it up real tight and shove it up your ass."

Kolya backhanded him, but John came up spitting blood. “You want the ZPM, Kollyboy? Fucking find it yourself. If you can.”

Rodney closed his eyes for a moment and mentally apologized to every deity he'd ever offended, doubting it would do any good, but trying anyhow.

Kolya stared at John who at least wasn’t attacking him outright yet. Something passed over his face and he glanced down at Cadman, then at Beckett. There he lingered, but then his eyes fell on Rodney. He looked at one of his soldiers. “Start with the leader.”

Two of the Genii took Rodney by the arms and he was pushed forcefully to his knees, arms twisted painfully. He gritted his teeth and felt a gloved hand pull his head back by his hair until the only thing he could see was the ceiling and the Genii's face which was twisted into a smile. Fury surged up inside him at the sight, and he knew it showed in his eyes, because the Genii grinned even wider.

The moment stretched unbearably, and Rodney braced himself for pain – John wasn’t going to give in, and it would take time for Kolya to accept that fact. Expecting the blow that was sure to come, Rodney pushed his anger ruthlessly away, all too aware of the tension humming in the air around Kolya and John. This was not going to end well.

Then John spoke, sounding defeated and lost. “Stop. I’ll do it.”

The Genii let go of his head and Rodney looked at John again, and saw him raise his hands in surrender, eyes on Kolya. And Kolya was smiling, his teeth glittering in the dark of the cave.

 

+++

 

John stared into Kolya’s knowing eyes, and knew that he was beaten. Kolya was smiling almost mockingly, resting his hand on John’s shoulder. “Good choice.”

John said nothing. Kolya patted his shoulder, then nodded to one of of his goons and John was pushed toward the pulley. He heard Rodney protesting behind him, but didn't turn around, keeping his head down. Kolya knew. He could hardly have missed it, John thought bitterly, and let himself be hauled up, aware of Rodney's eyes on him.

The Genii brought him up and tied his hands behind him. He let them, and stood quietly while they brought Kolya up from the chamber. Rodney shouted something, but John wasn't listening. Kolya looked at him in that speculative way of his and inclined his head at John. "Which way, Dr. Sheppard?"

John nodded in the right direction. "That way."

Kolya smiled. "Then lead the way." He gestured, not even with the gun, as if John was beneath his notice as a threat. Which he was, John reminded himself. Kolya had his team - had Rodney hostage. That was all it took.

He walked to the abandoned monastery, Kolya just a step behind him and wondered how they were going to get out of this. If he could somehow get Kolya to agree to a bargain to let Rodney, Carson, and Laura go if he found the ZPM, they would go back to Atlantis empty-handed, but at least alive. But that meant first getting Kolya to agree, and John had no leverage, had lost it all when Kolya realized that John would do anything he wanted to keep Rodney from getting hurt.

The monastery ruins were silent - the Sundarians they'd met had explained that someone had once tried to resurrect the Brotherhood of the Fifteen but that they'd died when half the monastery had collapsed. Team Misfit had found the old records among the rubble, and they had most of the stones. John was pretty sure that the last one would be somewhere in the monastery, since the strange writings had turned out not to be a gate address. He could be wrong, of course, but he didn't think so.

But now he couldn't afford to be wrong. Not with Kolya behind him and his team trapped in an underground chamber with no way of getting out.

His hands were sweating suddenly and he couldn't wipe his palms off with his wrists tied. Not wrong, he thought. Not wrong.

At the monastery Kolya untied him and he got to work, trying to force himself into his work mindset, the one where he ignored everything else, no distractions, nothing else. It worked for about half an hour until Kolya's closeness twanged his nerves too badly and he turned.

"Look, I understand you want to make sure I cooperate. But I really can't work with you sticking to me like a burr. So back off a few feet. I'm doing what you want. Just let me do it, okay?"

Kolya was still, and John had no clue if he was going to eat lead or get a pat on the head. He stood, palms open, projecting harmlessness as strongly as he could. Then Kolya smiled again.

"Very well." He sat down on a fallen pillar. "You know, I find it quite surprising."

John adjusted another laser light. "What?"

"You strike me as a man who cannot always see his own good, let alone that of others. Who would have thought that all it takes for you to cooperate is a threat to your team."

John said nothing and made another adjustment. But it was too much to hope for Kolya to actually shut up.

"Or rather, to this Staff Sergeant McKay."

John found it necessary to turn away from Kolya to adjust the next light. If that cast his face conveniently into shadow so the Genii couldn't see it, so much the better.

"Tell me, Sheppard. What do you see in him?"

John closed his eyes, then opened them again. "He's a good man."

"Ah."

Thankfully Kolya kept his mouth shut as John stared at the remains of the map and finally got it. He cast around for something to pry out the centerstone and ended up using a piece of rock. Kolya stood over him - again - and took the stone from him.

"Is that all?"

John sat back on his heels and glared up. "The stone will fit into the center of that dais we discovered back in the chamber. We've already got the other eight."

Kolya nodded. "Good. Do stand up now. We'll be heading back."

John got up wordlessly and headed toward the exit. One of the goons gripped his arm and he was turned around roughly as the second goon brought out the rope. "Is this really necessary? You know I'm not going to run or anything."

"Oh, I know, Dr. Sheppard," Kolya said and the goon looped rope around John's wrists. "I know."

John said nothing and let himself be led back to the chamber.

 

+++

 

They were fine, John saw, when the Genii lowered him down into the chamber. They were fine, if standing with their arms up and their hands behind their heads. Rodney looked worried and angry, checking John over at once for injuries. Laura was awake again and Carson was standing so close to her that they could almost touch. She looked worried too.

Carson was sagging in what was clearly relief. "John. Are you all right?"

John nodded. "I'm fine."

Kolya steered him towards the dais. "Dr. Sheppard. If you please."

John laid out the centerstone and sorted through the others. Five was in the middle, that much was clear, but the rest he hadn't figured out yet. But apparently the patience of the goon had run out.

John was pushed back and couldn't find it in himself to suggest that this might not be the best idea. So he said nothing and watched as the goon put his hands down and fell. Kolya caught him before he could hit the ground, but it was obvious that it was too late. The goon died, and John felt a little twinge of satisfaction at Kolya's softly worded grief.

The feeling left him at once as Kolya got up, gun in hand and aimed at John, eyes gone completely cold. John stood silently, tiny little voice in the back of his head going, you're gonna die and Rodney is gonna die and Carson and Laura, and that goon died because of you, as if you'd aimed the gun at him and fired it, and now Kolya is gonna kill you, all because you couldn't get the fuck over yourself and your fucking issues and you know what? You're so fucked.

Then the voice shut up, mainly because Kolya had the gun pressed against John's forehead, and the whole world was kind of silent and waiting.

"You knew this was going to happen," Kolya said, in the quiet voice again. John swallowed hard, hyperaware that now was a very good time to lie.

"No," he said, and had to swallow again because what came out was a croak. "No. I thought it might lock and we first had to figure out how to unlock it. But none of the other puzzles were lethal. I didn't know."

Kolya stared at him and pushed harder with the gun until John stumbled back and hit the wall behind him, hands raised, palms out. It wasn't enough. He had to give Kolya more.

"I didn't know," he said again, forcing his voice to softness, to sincerity. "You know - I wouldn't risk it. I wouldn't."

"I wonder if that is true," Kolya said softly.

John's eyes were beginning to water. He didn't move, just stood, open and helpless, and wished for a moment that he'd never come to this galaxy, that he'd never met Rodney McKay, that he'd never learned another person could be more important than his own life.

Then the gun was taken away and the safety clicked on and he sagged against the wall, heart pounding. A second later he felt the air move and pain exploded in his face and his head banged hard against the wall and he heard all three of his team shout in protest. He felt blood running down from his cheekbone and he looked at Kolya who stared at him, cold.

"You have four chances to get it right, Sheppard. And you start with McKay. Move."

John pushed himself away from the wall, not even bothering to wipe at the blood on his face, and went to the dais. He more felt than saw Rodney coming to stand next to him and wished hard for all this to just be a nightmare.

"Fifteen, I think. Five has to be in the middle," he said softly.

Rodney took one of the tiles from him, turning it over. "What did he try?"

"In order. But they'd never have set it up that way."

"No," Rodney said, sounding far too composed for someone who was about to die. "It's not reversed either."

John nodded. "Fifteen, I think. But in what way?"

"Sheppard," Kolya said. "Choose and go."

John flinched, then laid out the tiles. "Sorry."

Rodney actually smiled. "I don't plan on dying here. For what it's worth, I think you're right. Adds to fifteen every way, doesn't it?"

"Yes!" John stared at him. "How did you know?"

Rodney's grin showed too many teeth. "That would be telling."

John felt an answering grin show up. "Then I'll just have to guess. That's more fun anyway."

Rodney was about to answer when Kolya again said, "Choose and go."

John stepped back, reminded and needing to have this over with more than he needed to know Rodney's field. "It's right. Go."

Rodney nodded and put his hands on the grooves. John stepped back and when the ZPM came out of the wall, he simply nodded, something hard easing in his chest. He slumped and noticed too late that Rodney was nodding to Carson and Laura, and was looking directly at them when there was a flash and a boom.

The flash blinded him and the boom deafened him, and he ducked, covering his head with his arms in the hope that if someone started shooting, they'd be shooting over him. Lights were dancing against his closed lids, eyes squeezed shut against the flash. His ears were ringing, but that was already clearing up and there were fighting noises, then someone bumped into him and he yelled, "Rodney?"

"Stay down!" came back from several feet away and John gripped the leg and twisted, causing the Genii to scream as his kneecap popped out and he went down half on top of John. John still couldn't see but he felt the guy and rolled on top of him, feeling for the throat and jamming his elbow into the soft tissue. The goon made ugly choking noises, but managed a hit at John's jaw which made the laceration on his cheek flare up again and John bore down harder, putting all his weight on his elbow. The goon finally was still and John felt a hand on his shoulder, urging him up.

"It's okay, you got him. You okay?" Rodney, a little out of breath. John drew a breath and nodded.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. What the hell was that?"

"Flashbang," Laura said, from his left. "Damn, you were looking straight at it, weren't you?"

John drew a long breath and nodded, closing and opening his eyes. Still too colorful and too reminiscent of an acid trip, but they'd started working again, just in time to see Carson come at him with the first aid kit.

"I'm fine, Carson," he said. "Really. Can this wait just a little bit?"

"There's dirt in that wound," Carson said, intent on the facial injury. "I need to clean it out."

Rodney seemed to agree. "Okay. Doctor, check on that cut. Cadman, get the ZPM." He turned, focused on Kolya who was sitting dazedly and disarmed against the wall, and walked over to him and started talking softly. John tried to listen in because Rodney was being really intense, but he was talking too quietly. John sighed and leaned back, letting Carson dab something into the wound that stung, then burned.

They were fine. They were going to be fine. He clenched his hands together to stop them from shaking. They were all going to be okay.

 

+++

 

Once Carson had cleaned out the wound on John's face, Cadman had stowed the ZPM, and Kolya had been convinced that sitting very still was his best option, Rodney got his team back to the Gate, leaving the Genii in the chamber. Let them see how they got out. He dialled Atlantis, breaking up the usual order and sending Carson in first with John.

He probably wasn't going to get a chance to say this later, and it bore saying. "Lieutenant."

Cadman turned to him, a bit surprised at the formality. "Yes, sir."

"That was excellent work back there," Rodney said. "Quick thinking with the flashbangs, as well as taking out the Genii."

Cadman nodded. "Thank you."

"No, Lieutenant, thank you." Rodney nodded to her and waved her through.

She went and he gave himself a moment of just feeling relief before stepping through the event horizon into a gateroom that was full of shouting, people fussing over John and demanding answers. And Rodney just had enough. He filled his lungs with air, tucked his P90 against his midriff and belted out a loud and clear "ATTENTION!"

The gateroom fell silent. Most of the scientists were bugeyed that such a sound could come from a human being as opposed to a megaphone. The Marines snapped to attention because that was what you did when someone shouted like that.

And, of course, nobody on Atlantis had ever heard him shout like this.

Even his team had turned around to gape at him. Rodney nodded to them and stood in front of the gate and pitched his voice to reach the bridge at perfect volume.

"Dr. Weir, we have found a ZPM. Lieutenant Cadman will hand it over to you at once. I would appreciate for the debriefing to wait until we've had a chance to clean up. With your leave?"

Dr. Weir didn't get a chance to answer; Radek shouted, "ZPM? Rodney!" and came racing towards them, yanking the bag with the ZPM out of Cadman's hands, ripped it open and shouted something in Czech which Rodney had heard him yell before but under different circumstances. Then he took off and Dr. Weir told them it had been amazing work and to come for a briefing at 0900 next morning. Rodney collected his people and they left for the infirmary.

They all turned out to be a little banged up but nothing more. Cadman was still a little shaky from the poison dart the Genii had shot her with, Beckett was fine, and John had gotten the worst of it, but even that wasn't bad. The laceration on his cheekbone needed stitches, and his teeth had cut the inside of his mouth. His wrists were a little abraded, too, and as soon as they'd gotten out of there, Rodney took his people aside and asked John where the abrasions had come from. John wasn't quite meeting his eyes.

"Kolya was being an asshole. They tied me up going back and forth from the monastery. That's all." He smiled, a little bitterly. "Really. That's it. You'd know if it wasn't."

"Really?" Rodney asked. Something was off about John and he wondered what could have happened while he'd been in Kolya's power.

John looked up and met his eyes. "Yes, Rodney, really. He was trying to piss me off, that's all. He didn't hit me, he didn't do anything. Okay?"

Cadman gave John a quick hug. "I'm just glad you're fine."

Beckett nodded. "Yes, so am I." He hugged John as well. "Now go get some rest. It's been a long day."

"Right," John said, but he didn't look tired.

Cadman yawned. "Breakfast at eight, then?" They nodded and John left.

Once John had turned the corner, Cadman and Beckett said their goodnight to Rodney as well, and he left for his own quarters. He didn't feel tired, precisely, but he'd almost died today and felt he was owed a rest.

In his room, he hooked up the laptop to write his report, and put on some music. Soft jazz, a little Sinatra, Al Jarreau. Something to calm him down, he figured. He took a shower to get rid of the physical dirt while the music washed away the remains of anger, of worry, of the feel of his gun about to shoot Kolya.

That was not him. That was not the Mountie Rodney McKay, that was the twelve-year old who as revenge on an uncaring world built an atom bomb. But he wasn't like that anymore. He'd learned better.

He dried off and got into sweats, then dove into the report. He was halfway through when someone knocked. He almost didn't hear it over My Way, then hesitated. If it was an emergency, they'd have called him on the radio. Maybe he could - but no.

Stretching, he stood, and opened the door. John, also looking showered, though how he'd done that without getting the bandage wet, Rodney didn't know.

"Hi. Can I come in?"

Rodney stepped aside, sighing. "What can I-?"

He never got to finish because John was in the room, waving haphazardly at the door which obediently closed. Then John was not only in the room, but in his space, and looked as if he was about to be in Rodney's skin. His face was wild, wired, and he reached to take Rodney's head between his hands, kissed him, open-mouthed, crazily.

Rodney went hard, achingly so, in seconds. John was there and smelled of shower and soap, of man and sex, and he had Rodney's face in his hands, trying to crawl into him through his mouth, pushing him further into the room. Rodney grabbed back, kissed back, getting in the way of John's elbows, and oh yes, that was very good, too.

John was hard, and shoving at Rodney, trying to grind his erection into Rodney's hip. Rodney gasped into John's open mouth, and pulled him closer, steering him towards some wall. He felt as if he had never had sex before and the top of his head was about to come off. John was molded against him, and god, wasn't that just about the best ever?

John was resisting, but Rodney knew all the moves, and didn't let John get him off balance. He pushed, roughly, but John could take that, and there was that handy wall.

The moment John's shoulders hit the wall, he let go of Rodney's face, gripping his shoulders to steady himself, laughing and raking blunt nails all the way down to Rodney's waistband, over his t-shirt and god! But he wasn't getting enough friction elsewhere, some part of Rodney's brain supplied, the part that wasn't cheering at the electric sensation in his nipples. He shifted, John protesting into his mouth, and thrust one knee between John's thighs. John gasped, rubbed against him, shaking his head, hands fisting Rodney's shirt.

Rodney breathed in deeply, laughing soundlessly for joy, John so wild, almost coming. John gave him a bit of a punch for the laughing, snarled something, and grabbed his ass. Rodney felt his eyes go wide, his cock rubbing against John's hip, and that was almost too much right there and then. But he held back with sheer willpower, grinding, finding John's shoulders under his hands and not caring at all that John's hands were digging into his ass.

Then John went first still, then jerked against Rodney, and Rodney was gone. He shifted his hands to frame John's head against the wall, riding it out slowly, slowly, and how he had needed this.

He rested his head in the crook of John's neck. John had let his fall back against the wall, and seemed to be held up only because his knees had locked. Rodney was breathing hard against John's neck and felt the hot flesh shiver under his breath. Then had to think at his cock, you can't possibly be wanting to go again?

His cock seemed to think about it for a moment, then gave it up as a bad bet; John was inviting, truly to be eaten up, but Rodney wasn't seventeen anymore. So he just leaned there, smelling sex on John's skin.

John sighed softly, resting his head against Rodney's. Rodney grinned against his skin.

"That was - unexpected."

John swallowed, still not moving. "You think?"

Rodney chuckled, and felt John's whole body react. "You really like that."

John laughed and raised his head. Rodney sighed, the wetness in his sweats becoming uncomfortable, and reluctantly straightened up. John started looking awkward, then he just shook his head and stretched his arms. He pushed away from the wall, matching wet spot in his jeans. Rodney appreciated the view for a moment.

John peeled off his jeans somewhat disgustedly and shook his head. "That'll teach me to come this unprepared."

Rodney grinned and went into the bathroom for a wet washcloth. John took it and Rodney took the opportunity to kiss him lightly. John leaned into him for a moment, then stretched again.

"I need to go get some sleep. In my own bed for once."

Rodney nodded. "You want some clean sweats to go home in?"

John looked down at himself, then at Rodney and nodded. "Might be a good idea. Shouldn't scare the Marines." Rodney laughed and dug out his spare pair.

John looked calm for the first time since Rodney had known the man. Also, even Rodney's sweat pants looked good on him.

John bundled up his jeans rather laboriously, then nodded at Rodney, all casual and sunny smile. "See you at breakfast."

Rodney waited for the door to close behind him and leaned back against it, releasing a long breath.

Ladies and Gentlemen, John Sheppard has left the building.


	11. Love Me, Love my Geek

The mess was full, and breakfast consisted out of some springy substance masquerading as fried eggs. Rodney kept poking his, just to see it wobble madly. Cadman rolled her eyes at him.

"Didn't your mother ever tell you not to play with your food?"

Rodney poked the not quite egg again. "Not play with my food, yes. Absolutely." Rodney wobbled the egg for emphasis. "This is not food."

"Could have fooled me," John said cheerily, digging into his with gusto. "It tastes like bacon. Which is really weird."

Beckett was eating his slowly. "I heard that if you feed chickens with specific foods, sometimes the eggs taste differently. Maybe this, er, bird, was raised on bacon."

John nodded sagely. "Yeah, I heard that about sperm, too."

He'd timed it perfectly. Beckett spewed ersatz egg all over the table, Cadman shouted "Yuck! Carson!" and some Marines at the next table burst out laughing. Rodney got up and fetched some paper towels.

Well, at least nobody was permanently traumatized by the last mission or, apparently, its aftermath, Rodney thought with a covert glance at John. Eating strange eggs, teasing Beckett – he was looking positively zen.

Half an hour later he wished John's newfound serenity was contagious. Weir, Sumner and Radek were firing questions at Team Misfit almost faster than Rodney could answer them.

Weir looked elated, Sumner more surprised than Rodney felt the situation strictly warranted, and Radek kept falling back into Czech, so far away in Technoland that he completely missed Rodney's knowing grin each time a particular phrase came up. What made this even more funny, Weir apparently also knew the phrase's double meaning. She kept twitching.

When Rodney was finally allowed to get to the end of his report, John was fidgeting, Cadman and Beckett were bumping knees under the table, and Weir was full of praise.

"You've done great work, all of you. All of Atlantis has reason to be grateful to your team. Dr. Zelenka has tested the ZPM and will install it as soon as he considers it safe, and we're going to attempt to contact Earth as soon as everything is prepared. Take today off; you've earned it. Report back tomorrow at 0900." She smiled even more widely. "Have a great day."

Rodney thanked her and Team Misfit left the briefing room, by unspoken consensus going out onto one of the platforms outside.

"So," John said, stretching so far his t-shirt rode up and exposed his belly, making Rodney stare a little, "what are we doing today?"

Beckett sounded embarrassed. "Well, if you two don't mind, Laura and I would like to - well-"

"- go back to your room and make like bunnies?" John finished, grinning, which pulled on the bandage on his face and made him look slightly demented.

"Yes. No!" Beckett protested, then sighed. "Something like that."

Cadman put her arm around his waist. "If that's okay with you guys?"

Rodney nodded. "Of course. You deserve some time on your own. Go."

Cadman waved and dragged Beckett away. John looked after them contemplatively, then turned to Rodney, eyes wide and smiling.

"A whole day off. Now what could we possibly do with that?"

Rodney looked at him, standing there in jeans and faded t-shirt, leaning back against the railing and grinning like a shark. The morning light was falling over his shoulder and Rodney wished he had a camera.

"Poser. All you're missing are sunglasses," he said, aware that his throat had gone just a little dry. This was pretty far from freaking out. As far as Rodney was concerned, it was all to the good.

John raised an eyebrow, pushed away from the railing, and walked into Rodney's space, looking right at him as if he was a pizza with peperoni, extra cheese, mushrooms, and bacon.

"I got some in my quarters." He grinned again and Rodney could feel an answering grin steal over his face. "Wanna see?"

Rodney let his eyes roam and licked his lips. "Just see?"

John's eyes widened and he swallowed. Then turned and walked off, quickly. Rodney followed, body fully awake and ready to go.

 

+++

 

John's quarters were a mess, but Rodney didn't seem to care. He just waved the door shut and leaned against it, arms crossed over his chest and leering. You couldn't call that look anything else.

"So. Sunglasses?"

John narrowed his eyes. Rodney wanted to play, did he? He got an idea and wondered for a moment if it would be too weird. But the temptation was too great, so he nodded, trying not to laugh. "Yeah. They're in the bathroom. Gimme a second."

Rodney waved a little. "Take your time."

Okay, Mr. Smug Mountie, you're so going down. John smiled sweetly and pushed play on Winamp. "Here's something to entertain you while I'm gone. I know how easily you get bored." He went into the bathroom and pushed the door almost shut as We Meet in the Middle began to play softly from tinny laptop speakers.

He stripped fast, down to his skin, threw his clothes into the laundry bag, and grabbed the sunglasses from the cabinet. He put them on, then opened his door.

Rodney was still leaning with crossed arms, looking at John's twelve-sided printout calendar with a kind of amused condescension he was going to lose in just a second if John had anything to do with it.

A thought dimmed the lights and Rodney looked up, jaw dropping. John didn't give him the chance to recover, slowly prowling towards him, grinning maniacally, licking his lips. Rodney stayed at the door, looking ambushed, and John was okay with that, that was good, but he'd have to get him with the program, to be more precise, naked.

His room was tiny, so seven steps brought him to Rodney, close enough that John's hard-on was almost but not quite poking Rodney in the belly. There he stayed, having assured that Rodney was bulging at the right place, too, and was not precisely looking at the sunglasses.

The refrain started and Rodney was holding onto his own arms, as if he was afraid to jump John. John smiled and tugged on Rodney's shirt. Buttons today, and he flicked the first one open. Rodney's eyes were following him and the death grip he had on his arms relaxed and he put his hands on John’s shoulders. John leaned in, kissed him, and while Rodney was distracted, took hold of his collar.

John leaned back, grinned, Rodney's eyes going bright but unfocused, and John slowly rubbed himself against his erection, grinned wider and suddenly pulled down hard. Buttons flew off, Rodney gasped, and John found that this seemed to be all Rodney had been waiting for.

Rodney pushed away from the door, against John, and got out of the shirt. John took a half step back, laughed and opened Rodney's belt, then let him do the rest while he touched and ran his hands over that broadly built chest, the shoulders, and god! Different, different, but also the same.

They left Rodney's clothes where they fell, and instead fell on each other, and it was only after he nearly poked Rodney's eye out with the sunglasses that John ripped them off and dropped them on the discarded shirt. Rodney's hands were all over him, and that was so different that John kept gasping and being surprised by little things like the strength with which Rodney handled his body, even though Rodney had done that last night, too. But this was more in some ways, with no clothes between them, and John touched and turned on and finally, finally it wasn't an Ancient artifact he was doing it to.

Rodney was moaning and kissing him wherever he could reach, kissing his neck, his throat, his collarbone, but always careful of the bandage on his cheekbone. Stubble rasped on John's skin and surprisingly it turned him on like nothing he'd felt before. But this was Rodney, so maybe not that surprising after all.

They made it to the bed, standard Atlantis width, meaning way too narrow for two. John pushed Rodney toward the headboard and kissed his way down, unsure how this was going to go but not wanting to wait a moment longer. He raked his nails over Rodney's nipples again because that had gotten such a nice reaction last night and Rodney didn't disappoint him. He came half off the bed, and John just like that, no thinking required, licked a line up Rodney's cock. Rodney's hands were on his shoulders, fingers digging into the muscle, and he chuckled. Just for kicks, he licked again, and again, reaching down to stroke himself because this was just fun and too good to waste.

Rodney was moaning, quivering with tension, apparently trying to move and not move, because there was just no room for that. John licked and tasted and who would have thought blowing another guy would be this much fun. Crunch time, he thought, and went down, as far as he could, feeling really adventurous, which considering where he was, was saying quite a lot. Rodney still had both his hands on John's shoulders, gripping harder and harder, and far too soon, Rodney pushed him off and to the side, and just missed John's face, coming on his shoulder instead.

John grinned to himself and let him rest a bit while he tried out Rodney's taste, which made Rodney do a double-take. John hadn't quite made up his mind whether he liked the taste or not when Rodney sat up, kissed him deeply, and said, "My turn now."

John laid back, letting Rodney crawl over him, putting his hands behind his head. "Whenever you're ready."

Rodney turned out to be really, really ready. That was his first thought.

His second was that due South had it right. Mounties apparently loved to lick things.

Then he wasn't thinking much more, because Rodney was kneeling between John's spread legs and was tracing his body with his tongue, broad swipes for planes, the very tip of his tongue for long muscles, for creases. Rodney sucked his nipples until John was making desperate noises, gasping, moaning, each caress of that tongue electrifying, and he arched, leaving sweaty fingerprints on the wall and Rodney hadn't even touched his cock.

And Rodney apparently was loving this, too. His eyes were half-closed, and when he wasn't licking John, he was rubbing his whole face against him, over his chest and his neck, under his arms, and John was too turned on for words.

When Rodney finally did touch, John was already half gone, leaking and hard, his thigh rubbing against Rodney's shoulder. Rodney then stopped licking and instead went right down, swallowing, drinking, and John was coming, coming hard.

He came back down tired, languid, but there was one thing he really had to do before he fell asleep. So he pulled, and squirmed until their faces were at the same level, and he kissed Rodney, hoping that the kiss would say what he could not quite articulate. That the kiss would tell Rodney everything John had thought in the last two days.

He thought he was successful when Rodney simply pulled him close and nuzzled his hair. And he thought, as he fell asleep, I could stay forever like this.

 

+++

 

John, apparently, dozed off after good sex. Rodney stayed on the bed, half on John, just to watch him sleep. Hair mussed ludicrously even in sleep, his mouth half open, and god, Rodney just wanted to play with it, run his fingertip over the slack lips and see if that would wake John up. Probably it wouldn't, but why take the chance? He wanted to watch John like this, to drink him in, how he was, lying there, Rodney's semen dried on his skin.

The bandage was white and stark against John's skin. Rodney's eyes were drawn to it again and again, and something of that woke that twelve-year old again, who wanted to see blood. Rodney forced himself to breathe deeply. They'd survived, and he was a Mountie and Mounties did not wish enemies dead, even if those enemies had hurt someone the Mountie – that Rodney – loved.

Rodney chuckled ruefully, cold fury fading. He was being ridiculous. If Kolya walked in front of his gun, Rodney would take him down. Not because he'd hurt John, but to eliminate the threat. He'd told Kolya that, explained that he was not a military man. He was a policeman, and what a soldier might not be allowed to do, a policeman could.

He'd seen in the Genii's eyes that he'd understood. Soldiers fought enemies. Policemen protected their people. Rodney felt a smile crawling over his lips which had nothing to do with humor.

"What can you possibly be thinking?"

Rodney blinked, coming back to the present. John had woken and was watching him with a bit of wariness. Rodney smoothed out his face. "Nothing important. Sleep well?"

John grinned slowly. "Pretty good, yeah. And now I'm hungry."

Rodney laughed and pulled himself up. "I'll go forage. You - just lie there and look good."

John laughed, and posed against the wall, legs wide open. "This what you had in mind?"

Rodney bent down and kissed him. "Close enough."

He'd gotten dressed and was already at the door, when John said, "Bring supplies, too."

Rodney turned and saw John caressing himself, looking open in mind and body. He was smiling, and from the laptop still came, softly now, This is Jazz. Rodney nodded, and left, knowing that right at this moment, nothing he could possibly say would be enough.


	12. New Horizons

John had always subscribed to a simple maxim: If it feels good, do it. If it feels really good, do it again. And if you don't know if it will feel good, try it until you know.

He sometimes got truly lousy results - there was the hamster (he'd wanted some kind of pet) which turned out to be pregnant and suddenly there were eight hamsters which was just seven too many and he gave them all away. A vacation to see his parents was another, resulting in a lot of screaming. Then that one acid trip was one where he'd ended up puking his guts out for six hours.

Of course, sometimes the results were pretty cool, too. Binge-working with pizza and Chinese had gotten him to Atlantis, sex on a ferris wheel (Annie) was combining two glorious things, dancing tango all night in some seedy Argentinian club was better than any joint he'd ever smoked. All of which he'd never known he'd like if he hadn't tried.

Now, with Rodney's cock in his ass and funky lights going off in front of his eyes, all he could think was why didn't I try this before, goddamnit?

But he knew. He knew, and every thrust and every kiss brought it home to him again with force, he could never have done this with anyone but Rodney. Suck someone off, yeah, dry hump them, sure, but this? No. But this was Rodney, and really, he was only admitting it after the fact, that Rodney could do anything to and with him, and this had been a foregone conclusion since the moment Kolya had threatened Rodney.

But John didn't mind, couldn't mind, because he got Rodney, a Rodney as he'd only imagined him being, slow and careful, oh, and let's not forget cunning. Crafty, even. John had gone to take a shower and when he'd gotten back out, his nighttable was holding not only food (finger food!) and two bottles of - was that the smuggled beer Dr. Klein had brought? - but also a tube of lube and half a dozen condoms.

John had stared, and said, "I take everything back. Do you know there's something like, oh, overkill?"

Rodney had grinned, opened one of the bottles, and yes, that was beer, and he'd drunk and said, "You don't want it?"

Well, sex was all well and nice, but this was beer. One of (probably) four bottles left in all Atlantis. Also, the Pegasus equivalent of mozzarella sticks, so John decided to forgo the lecture for now and eat. And watch Rodney eat.

The licking earlier had clued him in. Watching Rodney eat in private hit him over the head with the clue bat. The man could probably make even salad look erotic. They ate on the bed, naked, legs tangled together, and if John's foot kept rubbing against Rodney's calf, who to blame him? Rodney hadn't showered, and John liked that, a lot, in fact, because right now Rodney's smell was strong, and he could feel the heat coming off his body. And of course he got to look at him, at his throat moving when he swallowed, at the way his muscles stretched and pulled, at his cock slowly growing harder and harder.

John suddenly felt that the food could wait. Here was Rodney, and really, he could eat later.

So he swigged the last of his beer, put the empty bottle next to the bed on the floor, reached over and took Rodney's breadstick out of his hand. Rodney opened his mouth in protest, but John was already there, kneeling between Rodney's spread thighs, and kissed him, tasting beer and chips and where were those condoms?

He snagged one, and got it open somehow, wiping his sticky fingers at the sheet. Putting the thing on Rodney as opposed to himself was weird, but Rodney was breathing hard again. John grinned at him, and Rodney grinned back, not even a little embarrassed by getting this turned on by getting a condom put on.

John kissed him again, and said, "You'll have to drive from now on."

Rodney was looking mischievous again. "Really? I thought you'd be the one clamoring for the driver's seat."

John punched him lightly. "I'll have you know I'm a brilliant driver, but I've never driven one of these before." Rodney huffed a little laugh and put his arms around John. John looked at him, suddenly feeling serious. "I'm not promising you get to do this every time. But here and now - you can drive."

Rodney got it. John saw that in his eyes as soon as the words had left his mouth and he smiled, letting himself fall back, sure that Rodney would not let him fall and crack his head open. He wasn't disappointed. Rodney's arms took his full weight, and Rodney lowered him slowly down on the mattress, kissing him again, his tongue swirling first across his lips, then dipped between them, and Rodney smiled against his skin.

Then Rodney got the lube and lifted John's legs so they lay on Rodney's shoulders, and then something slick went over his hole and John once more became aware that the mechanics of bottoming did somewhat escape him. He'd done it to Annie - hell, if there was something that he hadn't done with Annie, he'd be really surprised. But well, she hadn't done it to him.

Rodney was looking devilish again, and John told his cock firmly that it had damn well better calm itself down because no matter how sexy Rodney looked when he was planning something, it was bad bed manners to come before one's partner had even gotten one finger - and then the finger was there, and John was somewhat preoccupied with trying to figure out if he liked that at all.

Then Rodney twisted it, and seemed to search for something inside, and John was just about to ask him if he needed a map, but then Rodney found the spot. The good one, John thought disjointedly, and let sensation take him.

Rodney twisted and turned his finger, hitting John’s sweet spot time and again and gradually had John's hole stretched out which felt really strange, but strangely good, and the only thing that could have made this better would have been if he'd been able to touch Rodney while he was doing that.

And just as he was thinking that, Rodney took his fingers away, and that was outrageous, and John was about to launch into protest when Rodney also took his thighs down, and pushed his knees further apart, leaned down and kissed John. Kissed and kissed, and something blunt and big was nudging his hole, and Rodney was going so slowly, so slowly and carefully, that John had yelled at him to get the fuck on with it, he wasn't made of sugar, and anyhow, was he supposed to die of old age before Rodney got a move on? Rodney had laughed, and he'd pushed, and if John hadn't hated that song with a passion, he'd have sung the Hallelujah.

And now his ass was sore, and his back hurt, and god he loved it, didn't want this to stop, didn't want this to ever stop, and even if Colonel Sumner, Dr. Weir, and his father come back from the grave had burst in at this moment, he'd have shouted at them to get back out and wait.

He was drawing Rodney closer and closer, his arms trembling, and look, Rodney's arms were trembling, too, trying to hold himself up so he wouldn't collapse on John. John's nails had to be scratching furrows into Rodney's back, but he didn't think he could stop, because this was it, this was so it, this was pi, and 360 degrees, this was the basis of the universe, the heartbeat of a star, the backbeat of the wormhole, this was Stairway to Heaven, this was truth and John was coming, and something shattered.

Later he realized that they'd broken his bed.

 

+++

 

A taped notice at the mess hall informed all personnel that there was an all-day buffet because nobody wanted to take time to cook if they might be able to go home soon. Rodney glared at it, then at John who was already making a beeline for the buffet.

"Can't wait to stuff your face?" Cadman jeered, only just getting out of John's path. John flipped her off and started filling his plate.

Rodney sighed. "He hasn't had his coffee yet, Cadman. Did you expect rational behavior?"

She laughed, and handed Beckett a plate. "From our John? I expected the finger."

Rodney shook his head fondly and surveyed the buffet. The eggy substance from the day before was not in evidence, but plenty of fruit from the Married Planet, crayfish chips, bright yellow milk from some creature the Athosians had tamed, orange bread (pumpkin, not citrus), butter, someone's jar of nutella, another jar of honey, butter. He piled fruit on his plate and plunked it down next to John who was drinking wakeup juice. They'd dubbed it that on finding out that the plant it was made from contained large amounts of caffeine.

After two glasses, John looked a little more like himself, and Rodney tucked in. The pumpkin bread was not half bad. He'd wondered. He was about to ask John to pass the juice when he realized that all conversation had just ended.

Beckett and Cadman were looking at them, back and forth between Rodney and John. Rodney was about to ask if he had something on his face when he realized.

He was wearing John's Johnny Cash t-shirt.

He noticed John looking at him, shrugging.

Then a blushing Beckett broke the silence, waving a piece of fruit. "So, do we know who is leaving yet? And who is just going for a holiday?"

Cadman smiled, took the fruit from his hand, then took the hand. "Well, whatever they wanna call it, I think I want to stay here. Exploring brave new worlds, going where no Marine has ever gone before-"

"Yes," Beckett mumbled, then added something which sounded like "my bum", but Rodney figured he was wrong about that.

John leaned back and grinned at the happy couple, slowly rubbing his leg against Rodney's thigh. "I figure we decide if we want to go or stay. I mean, most of us could write the papers of a lifetime if we returned. Or be promoted. Or something."

Speculatively, Rodney said, "I guess I could go for Inspector." He grinned, mischievously. "Or write about the effects of wraith stunner blasts on mental health."

Beckett laughed. "Wraith DNA in humans. And frontier medicine."

"Captain Cadman," Laura mused. "God, my folks would be so proud."

"Finding Jagger," John said, then laughed when they stared at him. "The first try turned out to be Bon Jovi." Then laughed again at Rodney's appalled stare. "Yeah, that's what I said, too."

Cadman gripped Beckett's hand more tightly, then let go. "So what do you say? Stay or go?"

They were quiet for a moment, and Rodney felt a pang of something as he searched their faces. Then John pushed his chair back and got up.

"Stay." He lifted his glass of juice. "I say stay."

Cadman followed him. "I say stay as well. I don't need a promotion. I've got all I need right here at this table."

Beckett, who'd been looking panicky again, nodded, stood, and took her hand again. "I'll stay. Here."

Rodney, aware that they were all looking at him, got up as well and lifted his own glass and took John's hand again. "Then we all stay. Team Misfit stays on Atlantis."

Cadman whooped and clinked her glass against Rodney's, John followed, and then they were all drinking, laughing, and Rodney ended up with John's mouth on his and knew that he hadn't gone wrong. At all.

Finis

**Author's Note:**

> Oh lord, this story. I wrote it, together with Methaya, back in 2005, then lost interest in the fandom and a lot of other things, deleted my journal magus_minor and everything, and when I was cleaning out my harddrive today, I found it again. And could actually bear to read it. So, why not.
> 
> ***
> 
> If you consider posting this work to Goodreads: Please do not do it. These stories are fanfiction, and I don't want them near a site that's primarily for published original fiction.
> 
> While I appreciate that you might enjoy having them on your Goodreads shelves, please respect my wishes.
> 
> Thank you.


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